Keynote Address at the 74th Annual Rashid Family Reunion
Chicago, Illinois July 5-7, 2002
The Americanization of the Rashid Family by Jeannette Rashid
Can you believe that this is the seventy-fourth annual reunion of the Rashid Family? Next year we’ll be observing our diamond jubilee – the seventy-fifth year of a family gathering that celebrates love, kinship, and friendship. It’s wonderful to see the family grow in numbers and to see even the very young ones eager to attend the reunions.
I must tell you at the outset that this will be a purely anecdotal rather than well researched and documented history of the family. The late “bud” Rashid of Washington, D.C. gave us that in a beautiful presentation at the Houston Reunion several years ago.
Everything that you hear from me will be what my parents or other relatives have told me, or things I have observed through the years.
People ask how a family continues to gather annually for so many years. In my mind it is because the whole concept of having reunions was built on a strong foundation of courage, love, and dreams.
We begin in the late 19th century when the Lebanese immigrants, including some of the Rashids, began to come to this country. There seemed to be a greater influx of the Rashids in the early 20th century – the early nineteen hundreds.
These Rashids left the security of their homes at a tender age, some as young as 14 or 15. They came here almost penniless, not knowing the language and unfamiliar with this new culture.
You might ask, “How could their parents let them leave home this way? They were just kids.” Actually, it was an act of love to let them go. They wanted them to have the opportunities to live and prosper in this free country. They loved Lebanon, but making a living there was increasingly difficult for many reasons, including political.
Like most of the generation, my father Shaffeek (Shaffee) Rashid came here at age 15 and my mother, Zakia, was twelve when she came.
Actually, whether your Lebanese surname was Farha, Lahood, Saigh, Naseef, Francis, Ganim, or any other Lebanese name, you have similar stories in your background.
Coming here took courage – a courage manifested over and over by our family members through the years. It was this courage that made it possible for us to live in this great country and to enjoy its blessings.
It took courage and determination for them to learn the language, to get work, and to become American Citizens, but their dreams of the opportunities open to them in this new land kept their hopes high.
How were they to make a living? The Lebanese people are descendants of the ancient Phoenicians, who were the world’s first traders. They sailed the oceans and took their wares into the countries that existed at that time. Our people had an innate talent for selling. (Maybe they were inspired by that old saying, “He could sell refrigerators to the Eskimos.)
Most of the men and even some of the women began door-to-door selling. As soon as they were able to save a little money, they would send it to their families in Lebanon. Love of family was part of their moral fiber. Soon they were sending for other family members to join them in America.
They expanded into owning their own businesses, even if it were only a horse and wagon to take them through the countryside with their wares. They graduated into actual store buildings. Before long there was quite a generous sprinkling of Rashid grocery stores and meat markets throughout the country, with some clothing stores and import businesses in addition. (A local newspaperman vacationed in the upper peninsula of Michigan a few years ago and came bursting into our grocery store and told of his amazement at finding a Rashid Grocery Store in the wilds of Michigan.)
Today, may of our family members are very successful business people whether they own their own businesses or are part of a large corporation.
The new immigrants settled together in communities because they needed to be with each other for support and the familiarity of living with people of their own background.
Their assimilation into the American culture didn’t happen overnight. Remember that they weren’t going to classes like we do when we want to learn a foreign language. They had to learn English by living and working here, which is really the best way, anyhow.
A you might guess, there were some different pronunciations of common words. For example the consonants “P” and “B” were interchanged. Peanut butter became “Benis Buttah.” There were others! In their homes, they had kitchen “zinks. It was years before I realized the kitchen “zink” was the kitchen sink.
Verb tenses also were confused at times. One of our family’s fondest recollections is of Dad calling out to Mom, “Did you wound the clock?” The answer would come, “Yes, I wind it.” This was a bedtime ritual because the alarm clock was the kind you had to wind to make it run.
There were times when a word went through some kind of metamorphosis so that it came out with an English head and a Lebanese tail. For example, the floral of car was “car ott” – the ott was like our “s” in this case. Someone might say, “Yee! Il car ott be Detroit!” Translated that would be “Wow, the cars in Detroit!”
When we chuckle about their speech and pronunciation, it is not to ridicule them but rather to enjoy and love them. They were delightful!
From such beginnings, this immigrant generation became really quite adept in speaking the language. They learned to read and write English. They became naturalized citizens. In addition, they genuinely loved this country and appreciated their right to vote and have a voice in the government. We were repeatedly admonished never to forget to vote.
During these early years, after marrying and starting their own homes and families, they sometimes moved away from their original home sites but usually to a nearby town. They experienced the joys as well as the heartaches and sadness that life brings us. They lost children o illness. Parents died, many of them leaving young children. A few of them tried homesteading in the Dakotas, but after a year or two they came back. The bitter cold and the heavy snows were foreign to the Lebanese, for they had come from a land with a California climate.
Even after marrying settling into their own homes, and starting families, the relatives kept in close contact with one another. The pace of life was much slower. Quite often there would be a gathering of friends and relatives at someone’s home – much more so than now.
When they gathered together, they were happy and jovial. Their discussions often became quite loud with everyone wanting to have his say. They laughed a lot and teased each other a lot. Then, at some point sometime during the evening, if Uncle Jake Rashid of Fort Madison, Iowa was in the group, there would be a request for him to sing a “Bate Aataba” as it was called. The “Bate Aataba” was a haunting, mournful melody with lyric about their homeland and the loved ones still there. The words were composed by the singer and they came from the heart. As you looked around, you would see the listeners, both men and women, taking a furtive swipe at a tear.
Our people were also great believers in education. Obviously they great basic intelligence to accomplish everything that they did in a foreign land. They wanted their children to get the education that they had not received. They saw to it that their children graduated from high school. That was a must! You see, at that time lots of students dropped out of high school to go to work in the fields or the factories. High school graduation didn’t quite satisfy everyone. The dreams were at work again. A large number of that first generation to be born here decided to go to college. Those who did not had good reason and began their own climb to success in their own ways. Much of it was in the world of business. They worked hard and used their intellectual powers and imagination to pursue their dreams. They were successful! Today they are prosperous, retired businessmen and women.
From these beginnings, we now have represented in our family just about every profession you can name. We are very proud of that. As you know the Rashid Club is organizing a mentoring program to give encouragement and assistance to young people entering a professional field. Now children and parents alike automatically figure on college after high school.
May I give you just one illustration of how deeply this concept is becoming a part of the think of our children? One of my great-nephews, Luke LaDeur, son of Jeff and Debbie Rashid LaDeur, coming home from his first grade class last spring found a dime and a penny on the sidewalk. This was big! He was very excited and ran into the house to show his mother and his pre-school brother, Andrew. Having learned that he should share with his brother whenever he could, he looked at the two coins and then extended the penny to Andrew and said, “Here, Andrew, put this in your college fund.” So much for education.
As the family grew the children were starting their own families and were moving to different parts of the country to pursue their professions. It occurred to the elders that as families scattered all over the country, the second-generation children would grow up not knowing their cousins.
In 1928 a large group of them got together in one of the country’s smallest villages – LaFayette, Illinois. In our home in LaFayette, the Rashid Club was organized with one of its main purposes being to see to it that cousins would continue to know each other and the family values would continue to be up held. The result: An organization that continues to promote the love and the dreams that motivated the immigration of our fathers, mothers, aunts, and uncles to America.
The first president of the Rashid Club was the late Doctor Carl Rashid of Greenbay, Wisconsin. He was a cousin of the late Alfred and Lester Rashid of Davenport, Iowa. The first secretary was the late Josephine Rashid, daughter of the late Namaan and Amelia Rashid, then of Kewanee and later of Peoria. The first treasurer was the late Fred Rashid of Detroit, father of Inez (Mrs. Philip) Rashid of Detroit.
The first reunions were actually picnics, with host families cooking and serving the food, organizing games, awarding prizes, etc. As the family grew, that format was impossible to carry out and we began our convention-type meetings.
Ten years after the club was organized, there came the rumblings of war in Europe. Hitler was making his moves. Then came the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in December of 1941 and America was drawn into World War II.
Once more we saw a demonstration of courage and sacrifice. Forty-seven of our family served in this war and (as Tom Brokaw described it in his book of the same name) they became part of “The Greatest Generation.”
Ralph Rashid of Peoria was the first of the family to go overseas. Two of the forty-seven made the supreme sacrifice: Oscar Rashid, son of Minnie Rashid Barakat of Detroit, and Edward Rashid, son of Ray Rayhal Rashid of Davenport, Iowa were killed in action.
Since then, we have fought in Vietnam and Korea and in other military actions in which members of our family were involved. We have not been apprised of the numbers.
Here we are this evening, enjoying the fruits of the planning and foresight of those Rashids who came before us. We are grateful to them and to all of you who have been and/or are now involved in keeping this organization vibrant and healthy.
I would like to leave you with this wish: May we all have the courage to dream and to pursue those dreams with the same conviction that our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents demonstrated.