Photography by Ronald L. Harmon

Sedalia, Missouri 2004

            “Maria, do you want some of this funnel cake?” asked the elderly gentleman perched on a bench along the midway at the Missouri State Fair. “Manny and I are going to have a piece – it certainly looks tasty.”

            “No, not now,” answered the young girl dressed in a black shirt, her dark brown eyes acknowledging the interest of her grandfather as she pulled a container of lemonade to her lips to take a drink. 

            The accent that punctuated the man’s words like a pair of castanets told me that he once had lived in Mexico. He and his grandchildren had come to the State Fair on a day trip and they were blending in with the thousands of Missourians that were visiting as well as other people from Germany, India, China and innumerable other countries. Some of the people were now citizens; others  were only visiting.

            The United States continues to be a melting pot for the world with people coming here from every corner of the earth. Some have come to get a better education; some to improve their existence or to become a professional and perhaps assist in the space program, or to find a cure for an exotic disease that until that time had been a scourge to mankind. 

            The elderly gentleman and his little family was to me an illustration of the interlacing of communities and nationalities that have come to the United States to make this country great. Because they came, they, too, had their chance. And because of that chance, America gained great minds and philosophers such as Albert Einstein and Werner Von Braun who came from Germany; Depak Chopra from India; John Sununu, and Donna Shalala who are both Arab Americans.    

ISO 100, F2,1/50, Evening light