There are stories that arrive at exactly the right time.
With our nation’s 250th anniversary drawing closer, I wasn’t sure my heart was quite where it needed to be. But then I spent an evening reading through Kane County Treasurer Chris Lauzen’s “Love Letters to America” project. And by the time I finished, I wasn’t thinking about politics.
I was thinking about “we the people.”
Like Bela Suhayda of Sugar Grove, who evaded Soviet border guards, snipers and land mines for more than a month before finally making his way with his family from Hungary to the New York harbor in 1957. For the project, he wrote: “We gazed upon the Statue of Liberty as we floated into New York Harbor and I could see from the smiles on my parents’ faces, they finally felt safe.”
And William Badal, born in Baghdad, Iraq, who arrived in Aurora in 1966 at age 16 and learned, as a West Aurora High School student speaking “broken English” about a system of government that, “coming from a country marked by revolutions and instability,” simply “amazed” him.
“I washed dishes in the school cafeteria and the job included a free lunch,” he wrote. “To me, that was a blessing. I was not afraid to work. I was thankful for opportunity.”
And John O’Donnell of Aurora, who used the stories of his mother and her granddaughter to show that in just two generations, a family in America can move from poverty to prosperity.
“I dare say that most families in most places in most eras on the planet would not be able to tell such a story.”
And retired WGN meteorologist Tom Skilling, whose letter celebrated the “genius” of our nation’s scientists, who played “irreplaceable roles” in better understanding and forecasting weather and advancing science in general.
“This is a country which has done so much to foster its citizens’ hopes and dreams. … this sets our country aside from so many others,” he wrote.
And Christa Orum-Keller, whose essay is in memoriam to her late father Pete Orum, who came to America in 1965 from Denmark with every intention of going back to his birth country to start a nursery, but instead built Midwest Groundcovers in St. Charles into a successful wholesale nursery.
“He loved this country deeply. It gave him everything.”
And Len Wass of Oswego, who grew up working in the gas station of a father who never got beyond an eighth-grade education, but became a U.S. Navy submarine captain and eventually a consultant to Fortune 500 companies specializing in nuclear energy.
“I have never forgotten the blessings God has given to me,” Wass wrote, “including being born in the United States of America, a country where opportunity flourishes for those willing to work hard …”
As I read through the collection, I was especially drawn to a letter by Marine veteran Lynn Lowder, who led long-range reconnaissance patrols in Vietnam, an unpopular war where many in uniform were met with vitriol upon their return home.
The retired attorney and Naperville restaurant owner doesn’t go into any detail about how he received the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart,, but he does emphasize his many years in other countries has made him well aware of how precious and fragile our freedom and democracy is.
“It only takes a generation, maybe less, to lose what took centuries to build. … We criticize freely, which is itself an American freedom, but we don’t always pair that criticism with gratitude. And gratitude, I think, is something we owe,” Lowder wrote.
Aurora educator Arlene Hawks, whose parents immigrated from Italy and whose husband was a Vietnam War vet, touches upon the discord in our nation by writing about the importance of learning to separate love from hatred in our treatment of one another.
“This brings sadness to my heart but this country has always found a way to stand tall no matter what the battleground. We have always found the strength to rise up and become a resilient America.”
It’s a sentiment that leads to an important truth: Loving America has never required believing this country has gotten everything right. Our history is filled with triumphs and failures, moments of courage and moments we’d rather skip over. Every generation has wrestled with its challenges, and every generation has left this country a little different than it found it.
Yet none of these letters were about politics. What I read in these deeply personal stories from people with ties to the Fox Valley are words like freedom, opportunity, sacrifice, gratitude and hope.
The entire collection is available online at Lauzen.com/lovelettersamerica2026. I hope you will spend a few minutes reading the essays as a reminder that before we are Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, “we the people” are Americans.
Meredith VanKampen Krantz captured that idea not from a journey or an experience but by comparing this nation to her childhood home in Aurora, which was built in 1894, the same decade Ellis Island opened its welcoming arms. The house on Downer Place is now being sold by her parents, who taught her that when you inherit something worthy, return it to the world better than you found it.
“That is what I feel about this country, too. Not that it is perfect. Not that it has always been. But that it is worth the labor of love. Worth the restoration. Worth the careful hands, the vision and the willingness to invest in something larger than yourself.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
