The President's Speech and My Family Who Were Immigrants to this country.

My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too. And whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in, and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship. What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal – that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.

That’s the country our parents and grandparents and generations before them built for us. That’s the tradition we must uphold. That’s the legacy we must leave for those who are yet to come.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless this country we love.

Barak Obama

Here are my grandparentson my mother's side who immigrated from Norway and settled in St. Paul, Minnesota.  He built many of the Centennial homes in St. Paul and together they raised my mother and aunts and uncles in the new country.  My Grandmother Sophia told the children about the troll under the bridge and sang them songs to put them to bed.

Below: My father E. Paul Reineke as a child wearing his Sunday best.

In the center front are my great grandparents Conrad and Otillia Reineke.  My grandfather Henry Reineke is the only man wearing a bow tie.

My Great grandparents on my father's side came from Germany and also settled in Minnesota.  My great grandfather and his brother fought for the North in the Civil War and after the war built a cabin of bur oak on the Minnesota prairie. They were a pioneer family.  My father E. P. Reineke grew up on a farm and then graduated the University of Minnesota and then earned a PhD from the University of Missouri.  He won many awards for his original research in physiology and pharmacology. He did much of his scientific work at Michigan State University.