U.S.A.: land of liberty and nice people

"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!"
These words from Emma Lazarus' poem "The New Colossus" are carved at the base of the Statue of Liberty. They serve as a greeting to newcomers to this golden land.
Several years ago, my son Phillip had a school assignment to read this verse and then write his own poem of welcome. From the hand of a second-grader:
"Your [sic] entering a country with wisdom and the power to be free, for you are entering the red, white and blue. Where we have power to think and believe what we want to. And good jobs for people that don't have any. And nice people to help you."
Meeting Aleksei
I pulled the paper from the pile of Phillip's saved school papers the other day, after I met Aleksei Gopiyenko, or "Losha," as his American family calls him.
Losha is a 9-year-old boy from Belarus, a country still fighting the devastating effects of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986.
Like hundreds of other children from Belarus, Losha comes every summer to breathe the fresh air of the United States, clear the radiation from his lungs and prolong his life.
"Your huddled masses yearning to breathe ..."
This is the second summer Losha has spent in Columbiana with Rick and Arleen DeVivo and their three children, Zachary, 10, Madesyn, 7, and Paityn, 4.
Spending an afternoon with Losha, I was struck by the simple, common bond he found with all the boys -- being rambunctious and ornery. This child from across the ocean was exactly like every American boy.
The only difference was Losha is not American. In a few weeks, he will return to his radiation-filled, poverty-stricken country.
As I watched him run around the pool, pushing in one boy standing in his path and throwing a ball at another, the injustice of life swooped upon me.
I looked at my own children, and indeed, at myself. Through no act of our own, we were born in the greatest country on earth.
As I looked at Losha, this beautiful boy full of life, my heart ripped. This child did nothing to deserve to be born in a radiation-stricken land.
Opened home
Knowing that there are no earthly answers to such injustices, I looked at Arleen. Having nearly lost their youngest daughter in a fall two years ago, Arleen has struggled with unanswerable earthly questions. Yet, in the midst of their crisis, this family opened its home to a child from across the sea.
"I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
"We had a problem last year," Arleen shares, chuckling as we sit beside the pool watching the children play. "For about two weeks after he arrived, he would get up every morning and go jump in the neighbor's pool."
"Send these ..."
Swimming is not something the children of Belarus are able to do. Radiation still contaminates the water tables of the land.
"They don't deliver pizza there," Zachary informs me about Losha's homeland. "When he opened the door for the delivery guy, he freaked out."
"... tempest-tost to me ..."
"He came with three pairs of shorts, a shirt and a jacket," Arleen shares with me. "Losha is the same size as Zach, so he wears his clothes. I don't even separate them. He picks out what he wants to wear and puts it on."
"... your poor ..."
Going home
Last year, Losha arrived in America with a similar amount of luggage. He left our country with two 35-pound duffel bags full of clothes, toiletries, a year's supply of medicine for his asthma and eczema, and eyeglasses.
That's what made me search for Phillip's paper. His child's view of America is true. We are "a country with wisdom and power ... and nice people to help you."
God Bless America!
gwhite@vindy.com