No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.
— President Calvin Coolidge, from a 1925 speech to American Legion convention
Then the 20 newest citizens of the United States started singing, along with their families, many of their neighbors and friends, leaders of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and a four-member honor guard leading a delegation from American Legion Post 31.
First, America the Beautiful.
Next, God Bless America.
Each time the dozens of voices swelled as one to a chorus, the tent billowed back against the wind, especially with the final line of the Irving Berlin anthem: “… my home, sweet, ho-o-o-me!”
Finally, after a collective recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance closed the third annual naturalization ceremony at the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site on Plymouth Old Home Day, Hellen Mutevane Asava needed a few moments to catch her breath at the thought of how far she’d come from her native Kenya.
“People have freedom of speech,” said Mutevane Asava, an elder-care worker who moved to Burlington nine years ago to join her three grown children. “People have freedom of worship. You can worship your god in any way.
“It is a free country.”
Before leading the natives of 15 countries — three from Bhutan, two each from the Philippines and the United Kingdom, two from Germany, one apiece from Bangladesh, Thailand, Canada, Colombia, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Kenya and Switzerland — through the oath of allegiance on Saturday morning, U.S. District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha reminded them of the obligations that go with that those liberties.
“We must never be complacent or self-satisfied,” Murtha said. “The right to vote is endangered … when you fail to exercise your right to vote.”
Not to worry about Victor Pinga or his wife Clarita Concio-Pinga of South Burlington, natives of the Philippines who moved to the United States as children in the late 1980s.
“I’m really looking forward to my first chance to vote,” Victor Pinga, who works for nonprofit Save the Children, said while raising an affirmative thumb. “Maybe even more the local elections.
“The national election — it’s so loud!”
Louder than most of what the Pingas hear around Vermont about immigrants and their right to seek a share of the American dream.
“All the rhetoric, from certain individuals, it’s very troubling,” Pinga said. “I work a lot overseas, and when I’m out of the country people ask what is going on here, what is going to happen.
“We can’t explain it. I can’t explain it.”
“It’s an ongoing problem,” Concio-Pinga said of the recent wave of anti-immigrant in the presidential campaign. “It’s not going to go away.”
While acknowledging some suspicious looks over the years, Mutevane Asava said most Vermonters she has met “are very loving, very welcoming.”
Gil Raz, a native of Israel living in Norwich, concurred on his first day as a citizen.
“Vermont is friendly,” said Raz, who has taught religion at Dartmouth College for 12 years. “Very safe, very peaceful.”
Mutevane Asava and the Pingas also cited the relative safety of the United States in general and of Vermont in particular, for the sake of their children and, in Mutevane Asava’s case, a growing band of American grandchildren.
The elder Pingas, whose route to citizenship was delayed by their years living overseas while Victor worked for non-governmental organizations on development projects, relied on their U.S.-born children — daughter Andie, who’s looking ahead to her junior year at Phillips-Andover Academy and son Carlos, preparing for his freshman year at South Burlington High School — to help them gear up for the citizenship test.
“They were quizzing (Clarita),” Victor Pinga said.
“It was a lot of numbers,” his wife added.
“A lot of facts I have to memorize. Once I got to the interview process, it was OK.”
And on Saturday, they took the final steps in a notch 1,400 feet up in the Green Mountains … and a matter of yards from where Calvin Coolidge took the oath of office in the middle of the night of Aug. 3, 1923, after the death of President Warren G. Harding.
“It’s kind of special to do it here,” Victor Pinga said. “It becomes a family affair.”
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.