Barry Moreno - Ellis Islands Famous Immigrants

EDWARD FLANAGAN IN STEERAGE. The future founder and director of Boys Town is the big fellow in the middle foreground of this picture taken on board the steerage deck of the RMS Celtic ; the great ship docked in New York harbor on August 27, 1904. Pictured with Edward Flanagan is his younger brother, Patrick, who also became a Roman Catholic priest. Fr. Edward Flanagan was born in Leabeg, County Roscommon, Ireland, in 1886. In his boyhood, he was a shepherd.

FATHER FLANAGANS MISSION. Edward Flanagan was educated at the seminary at the Royal Imperial University at Innsbruck, Austria, and he was ordained to the priesthood in 1912. Accepted by a Nebraska diocese, he founded his orphanage for delinquent boys in 1917. Years later he said, When the idea of a boys home grew in my mind, I never thought of anything remarkable about taking in all of the races and all of the creeds. To me, they are all Gods children. They are my brothers. They are children of God. I must protect them to the best of my ability.

MONSIGNOR FLANAGAN WITH PRESIDENT TRUMAN. Flanagans work at Boys Town won him national recognition, and he truly became a hero to the American people. He was interviewed and consulted on juvenile delinquency, and his struggles were dramatized in the Academy Awardwinning film Boys Town (1938), which starred Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. In 1937, he was raised to the rank of monsignor and, after the war, was sent by Pres. Harry S. Truman to help orphans in Japan and Germany. He died in Berlin in 1948. Currently there is a movement supporting his canonization to sainthood.

LIN YUTANG. The distinguished scholar Dr. Lin Yutang (18951976) popularized classic Chinese literature in the West. He came to America for university studies and pursued postgraduate work in Germany. On his return to the United States in 1931, he was briefly detained for Chinese inspection at Ellis Island. His intelligent and witty books, including My Country and People (1935), The Importance of Living (1939), and Between Tears and Laughter (1943), endeared him to western readers and increased interest in China. He also published a Chinese and English dictionary, invented a Chinese typewriter, and wrote novels. He died in Taiwan, and his home there is now a museum.

ALBERT SABIN. With his parents, Jacob and Tillie Saperstein, and sister, Albert Saperstein passed through Ellis Island and settled in New York. The boy grew into a man and found for himself a new name, Albert Bruce Sabin. The family left behind the difficult life in their native city of Bialystock, Russia (now Poland), and America offered previously unreachable opportunities. Albert (19061993) became a physician but was soon drawn to medical research. He joined the fight to find a cure for polio. His contribution was astonishing; it was a live virus vaccine taken orally, and it effectively eliminated polio from the United States.

KRISHNAMURTI. Theosophys former world messiah, Jiddu Krishnamurti (18951986) was briefly detained at Ellis Island to look into an accusation of moral turpitude during an American visit on August 22, 1926. But after having questioned him, Ellis Islands commissioner Benjamin M. Day passed him as innocent. Krishnamurti later settled in California and became a leading philosopher and explorer of the human condition. ( The New Book Revelations: The Inside Story of Americas Astounding Religious Cults by Charles W. Ferguson.)