11th Finglish trip August 2011 #33 The Finns of Minneapolis gathered every summer to celebrate “juhannus”, midsummer, in Theodore Wirth Park, west of the old Finntown. In 1958 some 400 Finnish Americans gathered in the park to unveil a monument for Finnish Pioneers. The monument was erected by the Finnish American Society of Minneapolis. This granite monument features, on one side, a map of Finland, marking also the lands lost in Finland’s mid-twentieth century wars, and, on

11th Finglish trip July 2011 #10 Suzanne is the descendant of Swedish immigrants, and Arthur Koski comes from Drummond Island, Michigan. Arthur’s grandparents on his mother's side, Miina and Johan Laakso, were given a 160-acre homestead on the island in 1906. They had come from Luvia, Finland to the Kreetan community via Finntown in Brooklyn. Arthur Koski, however, wanted to travel and give up his role as the only son in his family. He signed on an iron ore freighter sailing

10th Finglish trip July 2010 #4 Old Finntown in Detroit, Michigan is a desolated and sad looking neighborhood, burned down empty house after another. It used to be a lively place where thousands of Finnish Americans lived from 1920s to 1950s in the heyday of Detroit's automotive industry. It is estimated that at the most there were 10.000 Finns in Detroit. Upper Peninsula Finns started to move to Detroit, when in 1905 Henry Ford announced that he would pay workingmen $5 a day

7th Finglish trip September 2008 #37 Aino Backstrand was born in Harlem Finntown in 1921. Her mother was from Honkajoki and her father was from Alajoki. In her childhood she lived with her mother for 14 years in three different Finnish rooming houses around Harlem Finntown. Aino´s mother worked as a maid. Aino´s father had moved back to Finland. Aino married Elis Backstrand in 1943 in New York City. Elis was born in Finland, he came to the US at the age of 17. After working

7th Finglish trip September 2008 #35 Anna-Liisa was born in 1928 in Pori, Finland. Anna-Liisa lived with her aunts after her parents got divorced when she was six years old. During the Winter War in 1940 as a teenager Anna-Liisa was rescued by the Swedish Red Cross first to Sweden and eventually to Norway to live with her relatives. A day before Hitler occupied Norway in April 1940 Anna-Liisa moved to her aunt to New York City. She started to work as a maid in Brooklyn. Duri

7th Finglish trip September 2008 #27 Päivö Tarjamo began his work as a pastor to Finnish immigrants in 1969 in Malmö, Sweden, during a period of active Finnish migration to Sweden. He worked in Finntown, Brooklyn as the last Finnish-speaking pastor of the Gloria Dei congregation (1987-1992) and went on from there to Dallas. He describes his years in Dallas with an anecdote noting that there were no funerals, because the members of his congregation were so young. Tarjamo was a

7th Finglish trip September 2008 #26 Linda Tani and Henry Orava and his mother Anneli live in the Finnish co-operative apartment house Hikipisara on 41st Street in the Brooklyn Finntown. In 1890´s Brooklyn Finns, who lived around Sunset Park or Pukinmäki, formed The Finnish Building Corporation whose first project was to built one and two family residences from 41st to 43rd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues in Brooklyn. The houses were all purchased by Finns. In the early 1

7th Finglish trip September 2008 #25 Helena Laitinen feels she is "The Last Finn" in the old Brooklyn Finntown where more and more Chinese immigrants are coming. She does not consider herself a migrant but an American because she was born in America although her parents were both Finns. They came from Pieksämäki and Viipuri. Helena worked most of her career as an editor in the publishing house and her last job was at the law firm. Her home church was the Finnish Golgotha Cong

7th Finglish trip September 2008 #23 The Imatra Society was a society of Finnish immigrants located in Brooklyn, New York. The society was founded by John A. Koski, a building engineer. A preliminary meeting was held on December 6, 1890 and was followed by the founding meeting held on December 14, 1890. The society built its own house for their activities and moved into it on November 1, 1908. Opening celebration was held on November 18 and 19. They also supplied to their new

4th Finglish trip September 2006 #9 Arno Rafael Minkkinen is an internationally renowned artist who merge his own body with light or the landscape in his self-portrait works. Minkkinen has taught at MIT in Boston, the Helsinki University of Art and Design and the Lahti Institute of Design and Fine Arts. Arno Rafael Minkkinen was born in Helsinki in 1945. His father Reino was born in Japan in 1910 into a family of Finnish missionaries, and his mother Riitta was born in 1915 at

4th Finglish trip August 2006 #2 The Finntown of Butte, Montana gave way to a surface mine. Butte was known in Finglish as Piutti. Berkeley Pit, formerly an open-pit copper mine, is now a lake poisoned by arsenic. The pit and its water present a serious environmental problem, because the water is releasing acid. When the pit water level eventually reaches the natural water table, estimated to occur by around 2020, the pit water will reverse flow back into surrounding groundw

3rd Finglish trip March 2006 #2 The former reception terminal for European immigrants in the Port of New York has been converted into a museum. The last ship docked here in 1924. Other routes to North America included Halifax, Canada. The Ellis Island museum has collected a great deal of information on the immigrants that passed through the island. The names of some 700,000 people are found on its Wall of Honor. Only memories remain of the Finntown in New York’s Harlem, where