American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [222]
On many levels, the restoration of Ellis Island has been a success. Many visitors come not just to see the renovated main building and museum, but also for something called the American Immigrant Wall of Honor. Iacocca took this idea from the Wall of Sixteen Million that appeared in Philip Johnson’s 1960s design, but he added his own salesman’s twist. With his philosophy of “Give ’em a piece of it,” Iacocca decided to charge people to put their names or the names of their ancestors on the wall. By 1993, the wall had raised more than $42 million, with the potential for more money from more names on expanding walls in the future.
By accident, Iacocca added to the confusion of Ellis Island. Most visitors believe that the Wall of Honor lists the name of every immigrant who passed through the island. Many are upset when they do not find their ancestor’s name on the wall. The reality is that an immigrant’s name appears on the Wall of Honor only after their descendants donate at least $100. No money, no name.
More confusion followed. Samuel Freedman found that his grandparents are listed twice since both his father and an uncle or aunt had separately given money to list their parents’ names. To confuse matters even more, when visitors see the Wall of Honor, they are liable to find scattered among the over 700,000 names (as of 2008) such “immigrants” as Miles Standish, Paul Revere, and Thomas Thayer, whose name was added thanks to the donation of one of his descendants, former First Lady Barbara Bush.
At the other side of the historical spectrum, Ellis Island immigrants share space on the walls with people like Shin Ki Kang, a Korean immigrant who came to America in 1977 and Parvis Mehran, a recent arrival from Iran. The grab-bag nature of the Wall led a reporter to describe it as the “apotheosis of the American dream, allowing anyone and everyone to purchase a place in American history.”
What name does one put on the wall? One woman complained that
she would have loved to have her grandfather’s name on the Wall of
Honor, but did not know which name to use? Should it be Nehemiah
Nohr, his given name at birth, or “the name assigned by the authorities
at Ellis Island and by which he would be known for the next 50 years
as a naturalized American, Jacob Friedman?” This woman complained
that the Nohrs had vanished into history, “obliterated . . . without
known reason, creating a dilemma that those Ellis Island clerks could
hardly have foreseen.”
The connection between Ellis Island and the issue of names remains
tightly drawn in the public mind. As in the mind of the daughter of
Jacob Friedman, Ellis Island has become synonymous with the changing of immigrant names.
The most famous story of an Ellis Island name change is that of
Sean Ferguson. This Jewish immigrant was reportedly given his Scottish-sounding name by inspectors who, after asking the confused immigrant his name, received a response in Yiddish: Schoen vergessen,
meaning “I forgot.” Thus was baptized Sean Ferguson.
The stories multiply. Immigrants from Berlin received the last name
Berliner from officials. Then there is the story of a Jewish orphan who
told inspectors he was a yosem, an orphan, and found his new name as
Josem. Another immigrant was supposedly told by officials to “Put
your mark in this space” and found his name had become Yormark.
In the HBO series The Sopranos, a mobster named Phil Leotardo complains at a family gathering that the