"I was a student in Iran, but after the 2009 elections, I knew it was time to emigrate. People in the United States don't understand how a country can change in a night, in a week, but it can. Friends of mine, other students, were being killed, all because of politics. There was no such thing as saying, 'Oh, the elections don't affect me; I don't worry about them.' No. You have to."
"My twin brother and I were 17 years old when our family came to America as part of the resettlement program for Soviet Jews. It was a stressful and difficult time for our parents. They were leaving careers, home, money, and a lifetime of possessions and starting all over, but it was important to my mom that we get out of Ukraine. It was 1979, the Soviet Union was at war in Afghanistan, and caskets were already coming back to the country. My brother and I were at the age where we were subject to the draft, and my mother, God rest her soul, just did not want us to go there. "With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, we were settled in an inexpensive apartment in Memphis. We had the clothes on our backs and $90 per person to our names, but even so, the living conditions were better than where we had come from. Back in Ukraine, there was literally nothing in the stores. No clothes, no food. But here, you could go to Kroger and see rows and rows of meats, cheeses, and more. It was a culture shock. We all got jobs right away. My brother, sister, and I worked as many hours as we could at a McDonalds near the apartment. We were shocked to find out that if a hamburger didn’t sell in 11 minutes, it was thrown in the garbage. That would never happen in the Soviet Union. Here, you buy an item for 59 cents and then toss it because you know you can get another one easily, but for someone who has to walk around for a month looking for something in a store---if they find it, they’re going to treasure it. It’s a different mindset. "Immigrants have been coming to the United States since the beginning. Whether it’s to escape persecution or to earn more money, they come to make their lives better. Why would you not appreciate a country’s constitution, a country’s environment? Why would you bash it? As Jews living in Russia, we were discriminated against. You can’t go to a good university because anti-Semitism is rampant. People make comments about you if you’re standing in line for food: ‘Jews always have to buy more food than us.’ Always derogatory comments. You don’t experience anything like that here. People here say: 'That’s fine! That's great! Jesus was a Jew!' That kind of stuff. We felt protected by this freedom of expression. Our entire family, and I’m sure thousands of immigrant families, value that freedom. So when someone takes the American flag and stomps on it, I see that as just wrong on many levels. There are people who made this country what it is today and died in defense of the Constitution. And you’re going to desecrate the flag? If you don’t like something, we have a voting process. We have a way to make changes. That’s what we understood from the beginning. "I’ve been a scout leader for a long time, and one of the things I teach the boys is the value of patriotism. We say the Pledge of Allegiance at every meeting, and when we retire a flag, we have a flag burning ceremony. I have a container with ashes from every flag we’ve retired over the years. Those ashes mean something to me, and they mean something to the boys. I have a lot of respect for this country. One of the best and happiest occasions of my life was in June of 1985 when I was granted my United States citizenship." Igor and (identical twin) brother Alex, age 17, newly arrived in America, on a visit to New Orleans. (image courtesy of Igor Veksler): "The picture (below) was published in Hebrew Watchman in January of 1980. It captured the moment our family stepped off the airplane at Memphis International. Years later my brother added an American flag backdrop and the words 'Freedom, there is no substitute'." (image courtesy of Igor Veksler): Igor and Alex on a visit to Ukraine in 2012 (image courtesy of Igor Veksler): Igor Veksler is a Scoutmaster for Troop 338, which meets at Hope Presbyterian Church in Cordova. Website for Scout Troop 338: http://www.troop338.org
"We started with Scouts just to have fun but stayed in it all these years. My son is grown now and finishing up his Pharm.D. He Eagled out in 2007, but I never left. I enjoy the outdoors, and I enjoy being with the kids. I’ve seen guys come in here, inept, not knowing how to do anything. Mama drops them off, and they don't even know how to wash their own dishes. By the time we’re finished with them, they not only know how to cook, they're respectful, they know how to do first aid, they know how to build a survival shelter, and they know how to get themselves out of dangerous situations. They go from being boys to being men. It’s rewarding." “I was in management for 26 years but there were some false accusations against me, I lost my job, and I haven't been able to find another one yet. Right now I’m working to clear my name, but in the meantime I’m homeless. I had always thought about opening a shelter but I’d never been in one until just recently. It was like God was saying to me, ‘How are you going to open a shelter and you don’t even know what one is like?’ I’m finding out now that lot of bad things go on in there that people on the outside don’t know. People don’t get along with each other and there are some big issues. I’m not worried though. I’m just passing through this part of my life and learning. You can’t help somebody if you don’t know what they’re going through, so that’s what this time is for. I’m staying positive about the situation.”
“You don’t just wake up one morning and say, ‘Hey, I want to be in a gang.’ You develop these relationships because you’re trying to fill a void in your life. Even if you have family around, which I did, you can still feel like you don’t belong, still not feel loved enough. So you navigate to a group of people who have those same insecurities and you feed off of each other. You find acceptance. There’s a feeling like, ‘I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine, no matter what.’ You want family, you want somebody to be loyal to you, you want to be loyal to somebody else. It’s like a brotherhood, a sisterhood, people you can depend on. You think, ‘I’m part of something bigger than myself now. It’s not just about me. I gotta look out for my brother now, for my sister.’ There’s a sense of, ‘I’m doing something with my life.’ “Once you’ve formed this tight bond, you end up doing whatever the other people in your environment are doing. Where there’s a high rate of poverty, where education isn’t valued, where you don’t have role models who’ve gone to college and gotten their degrees, and where there’s no real accountability, you’re going to find a lot of illegal things going on. If drug-selling is a norm, you’re going to get involved in it. If weed smoking is a norm, you’re going to get involved in it. Then, say, we’re smoking weed together and the police come, and you tell me that you have cocaine on you, then I’m with you. We have this bond, so we’re going to get through this together. I’m going to run with you. Or if you say, ‘I’ve got a gun on me, I think I’m going to go rob this store’, then even though I may not agree with that, I have this bond with you, so I say, ‘I’m not going to do it, but I’ll watch out for you.’ That’s how you find yourself in those situations. If we’re selling drugs together and we’re running from the police together, we have this shared experience, like you’re really down for me, and it brings us closer. “I’m thankful I got out of the gang before things got too deep, before I saw or knew too much. I was in middle school when I got connected with Repairing the Breach, a program that reaches out to youth in the Alcy-Ball neighborhood. Because of God and because of RTB, I made permanent changes in my life. It was lonely at first and I had to be okay with that, but people respected my decision because I wasn’t wishy-washy about it. I began to realize that I didn’t have to be a product of my environment. I didn’t have to think that this was all there was to life. I began to explore questions like, ‘What can I do? Who am I? What are the gifts and talents God has placed in me?’ I brought my grades, up, graduated from high school, and I’m in my second year of law school now. I volunteer at RTB as much as time allows because I think it’s important to show young people that there’s another way to live. I love Memphis, but there’s a lot of work to be done. I definitely think there are things I can do to help this city, and I want to do that the best I can.” Dominique is involved with Repairing the Breach, an outreach to youth in the Alcy-Ball neighborhood, in the areas of mentoring, leadership, and academics. Read more of Dominique's story HERE.
“I was prompted to become a St. Jude volunteer after my brother was diagnosed with cancer. When it hits close to home, you feel like you want to do something. He’s my baby brother, 14 years younger than I, and after our mother died, he said to me, ‘You’re going to be my mom from now on.’ I take that very seriously, so I resigned from my job to be with him; I didn’t know what lay ahead. He went into remission a year and a half ago, and that's when I applied at St. Jude. It had been very difficult to see the treatment my brother went through with the radiation, so I knew I didn’t want to be in an ICU situation or where the children were being given treatment. I wanted to work in the cafeteria, an area where I could see the families away from all that hospital stuff, just being together. For the past year, I’ve served there one day a week, and it’s been as fulfilling as I thought it would be. Our job is to anticipate the needs of the families, help wherever we can, and make mealtime a good experience for them. “Sometimes when you interact with the family, they will want to tell you their story. You think you’re just having a casual conversation with ordinary people---asking them where they’re from, how long they’ve been there---and at the very end, several times I’ve had people just break down and say, ‘Thank you so much. God bless you for this.’ I think, ‘What did I do?’ It seems so insignificant just to listen, but it touches them in a special way. When that happened for the first time, within the first month I was there, I realized this is what I wanted to continue doing. “I am so inspired by the strength and courage of all these people. I have absolutely no room to complain about anything. I never imagined I would meet parents whose first child, just three months old, had already been diagnosed with cancer. How do get cancer when you’re three months old? One mother told me how she was so full of guilt when her child was diagnosed. She said to the doctor, ‘Is it my fault? I tried to eat healthy meals, I had check-ups on a regular basis. There was no hint that there was a problem, and now my baby has cancer.’ Her heart was just aching. She cried and cried and felt so guilty. Her child is in remission now, and she said that this whole ordeal has brought the family closer. She talked about her husband stepping up to take care of the house, do the laundry, shopping, everything. She said, ‘I never knew he had it in him, but we're pulling together and our relationship is better than it ever has been.’ And I’m thinking, Wow, because it can really take a toll and tear the best of marriages apart. It can go either way. “It’s so wonderful when a child's treatment is completed and you see extended family coming in carrying balloons and wearing matching T-shirts with the child’s name on them. They parade through the cafeteria, and it’s like a family, everyone high-fiving and cheering that child on with ‘No Mo’ Chemo! No Mo’ Chemo!’ Isn’t that a crazy thing to shout? But that’s what you do.” Kate Schurch is a volunteer with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, 262 Danny Thomas Place. For information about volunteer opportunities, see the St. Jude Volunteer page.
"He's in training to become an Assistance Dog. We got him at 8 weeks and will have him until he's 18 months old. Our job is to teach him to follow commands, to sit, stay, heel, and remain calm whatever is going on around him. He has to learn how to handle noises and distractions and to be loving and supportive of the person he's paired with. He's our second one to train. Once his time with us is up, he'll go off to 'college', that is, back to the organization to learn the hard stuff. Their training is rigorous and specific, but the hope is that one day he will be a seeing eye dog for someone who is blind. Or an assistance dog for a veteran who may have PTSD or some other issue."
“I started dancing in 4th grade and doing ballet in 7th grade. It’s been an amazing experience for me and a great way to express feelings and release energy. I’m a senior in high school now, and I plan to major in dance when I go to college. I used to be kind of ashamed of doing ballet because not that many guys were involved in it, but then I saw where it was taking me. I’ve danced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and this summer I attended the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts at MTSU. I was the only male dancer there, but it was fun.” LeAnthony is with the New Ballet Ensemble and School, 2157 York Avenue.
"What do I love about Memphis? The history, the culture, the mighty Mississippi. It's a great place to raise kids. Memphis is up and coming; I think it's on the rise. Our exchange student from China has only been here a few days and we've taken him downtown twice already. I hope when he goes back home, he tells everybody to come and visit."
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March 2021
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