July 2026 eBulletin Now Available

Dear Fellows:

You will read further in the eBulletin about our Annual Meeting, October 22-25, 2026, in New York City. The venue – the Waldorf Astoria – is spectacular. President-Elect Sandy Forbes’ speakers will be educational and inspiring. The opportunity to join our friends at the City’s finest plays will be entertaining.

But our Saturday night event at Ellis Island will not just be memorable – it will be unforgettable. This is true even if you have been there before, because the venue is not typically available for a private, evening visit.

Yes, the College has rented Ellis Island for our Saturday night event (our black-tie induction banquet and ceremony will be held Friday night). Our attendees (which will likely number over 1,000) will have it to themselves, accompanied by only the ghosts of the millions of people who, carrying all that they owned, sought the freedom offered by America.

Between 1892 and 1954, approximately twelve million immigrants passed through Ellis Island. The busiest year was 1907 – when 1,000,000 sought access to the United States. The biggest single day? April 17, 1907, when roughly 11,747 people were processed.

Four million Italians. Three million, five hundred thousand from Austria/Hungary. Over three million from Russia and Poland. And so many more.

The Ellis Island experience, and life for immigrants in their new country, was hardly simple or welcoming. As one Italian immigrant said, “I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, I found out three things: First, the streets were not paved with gold. Second, they weren’t paved at all. Third, I was expected to pave them.”

Fear was pervasive. One immigrant said, “I couldn’t enjoy nothing. I was afraid they were going to send me back. And I was dreaming that if they try to send me back, I’m going to fall into the river and die. I couldn’t go back.” Another said, “Here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries.”

They came to what was still a very new country, still recovering from a grueling civil war. A country where Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was new law. Where Jim Crow was a way of life for millions of Americans. Where voting rights for African Americans were ignored. Where Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and the heirs of Cornelius Vanderbilt controlled much of the American economic system.

But they came anyway. As one contemporary observer noted, “We must not forget that these men and women who file through the narrow gates at Ellis Island, hopeful, confused, with bundles of misconceptions as heavy as the great sacks upon their backs — these simple, rough-handed people are the ancestors of our descendants, the fathers and mothers of our children.” It is estimated that 40% of Americans have at least one ancestor who passed through Ellis Island.

As Fellows, we have the opportunity to stand where those future Americans stood more than a century ago. We will see a much different skyline, but across the river we will still see a nation that continues to inspire hope around the world. And we will see what so many immigrants saw as they arrived on American shores: the Statue of Liberty, illuminated against the night sky. It brings to mind the words of Emma Lazarus, inscribed on the Statue’s pedestal and familiar to generations of Americans:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

A significant part of the United States was built on the labor and sacrifice of immigrants passing through this little island, and some 130 million of us are their descendants. It is fitting that each of us who are able seize this opportunity and (borrowing from the words of Emil Gumpert) “seek, for the moment, to obliterate the recollection of our distractions, our controversies and our trials, and to transport ourselves from the rush and tumult and uproar of our daily lives” by honoring their memory. And, for one night in a hallowed place, attempt to stand in their shoes and give thanks.

We hope you will join us to experience the unforgettable.

John A. Day
President

To read the July 2026 eBulletin, click here.