May 29th

I was a boy from Syracuse most of today. I will review a few places I visited to learn about history of the region and then focus on one of those spots on the trip to which I was really looking forward.

First I walked around the campus of Syracuse University, where a lot of people I know and a lot of sports announcers I have heard attended. The main quad had a lot of interesting older brick and stone buildings. Then I remembered that Rachel’s cousin Mike and his wife Amy grew up on the same street in Syracuse (and met years later around Boston). Mike and I texted and spoke briefly and I sent him a picture of his old house.

The Erie Canal may be the most important factor in New York City becoming the largest port and business center in the country. The Erie Canal Museum shows that it was built between 1818 and 1825 and like the Hoover Dam it was completed a year early and under budget. It enabled food to be transported from the midwest to New York through the the Great Lakes, the Canal and the Hudson River (and manufactured goods were transported in the other direction). It was paid for and then some by tolls and the museum includes the only remaining counthouse (aka tollbooth) in the country and a replica canal boat to board.

The Onendoga History Museum showed how salt that was found on the shores of Lake Onendoga was the first big product in Syracuse but Syracuse’s central location on the canal really drove its growth in industry and banking (somebody had to hold to all that toll money!).

Down the thruway in Rome is Fort Stanwix. This was always a busy and strategic place because before the canal, boats and their

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cargo had to be carried between the end of the Mohawk River and the waters heading west. The British built the fort for the French and Indian War. Then the American rebels took it over and won a key battle during the Revolutionary War. The fort was also the site of the final land agreement between the victorious Americans and six Native American nations. The whole fort was torn down and the National Park Service has been restoring it in recent years.

The Safe Haven Refugee Camp at Fort Ontario in the town of Oswego was the one and only instance where the US government helped save European Jews during WWII. When FDR received clear evidence of the Nazi concentration camps, he created the War Refugee Board. They found a displaced persons camp in Southern Italy in 1944 and selected just under 1,000 refugees (mostly intact families) to take a troop ship and live in the recently decommissiond fort on the shores of Lake Ontatio. They were quarantined for a month and in the familiar position of being inside a fence. But the townspeople were very welcoming and the refugees got involved in all kinds of activities, both within the camp and in town. A few teenagers who arrived knowing no English in 1944 received New York Regents high school diplomas in 1945. But the refugees had one more crisis to face. When they left Italy, they signed papers acknowledging they might be sent back to their home country after the War. But they had assimilated so well in Oswego and in most cases had no real home to which to return. With strong advocating by their New York Congressman and the refugees themselves, President Truman allowed them to go a few miles to the Canadian border and step back as immigrants on a path to citizenship. The Safe Haven museum shows a film from some years ago with interviews with the former refugees, who of course went on to do amazing things as Anericans. It’s a wonderful story. Too bad there weren’t 6,000 more stories like this in the United States and other allies countries.

The song of the day is “(15 miles on the) Erie Canal” on Bruce Springsteen’s “Dublin” live album, that I swear came up on my iPod while driving this afternoon. And the Broadway musical of the day is “The Boys from Syracuse”, based on a Shakespeare play that takes place in Syracuse … Sicily.