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At Home, At Last

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 17, 2008

TAMPA - Friday afternoon, Flag Day eve, in a Tampa Convention Center ballroom of close to 1,500 patriots, Merle Patricia Bradshaw Romain did what she knew she ought to have done ages ago. Sheathed in a pink floral dress and rising on simple, low-heeled beige sandals, Romain hoisted her right hand to repeat, with a solemnity that belied the unalloyed delight in her heart, the oath of allegiance for naturalized citizens.

Obliging herself freely and without mental reservation, Romain, a retired reference librarian with a substantial sense of history, foreswore princes, potentates and/or other previous loyalties, vowed to uphold and defend the Constitution and its laws, to take up arms or perform noncombatant duties if required to do so by law, and wrapped it up with as hearty a "so help me God" as was ever uttered by a new president on Inauguration Day.

(Including the seventh, 15th and 22nd, who Romain could tell you, without crib notes, were Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan and Grover Cleveland.)

This is how, 37 years after she became a permanent resident of the United States and a dozen years after she moved to Zephyrhills, Romain at last joined the ranks of its citizens, eligible to vote, brandish the world's most coveted passport, be summoned for (and possibly attempt to wriggle out of) jury duty and, best of all, to be able to call this place - better still, the idea behind this place - "home."

Why now, after such a long time, is a question without a satisfactory answer, except to the extent that we all get comfortable with certain arrangements, even if those arrangements sometimes manifest inconveniences; otherwise, procrastination would not exist. Perhaps signing on finally made sense when Jacqueline, the fifth of the seven children Romain spent, pretty much, the Beatles era birthing in England, declared her plans for naturalization. From Bethesda, Md., where she is mom to two of Romain's grandchildren, Jacqueline - the last of the Romain daughters not to have become naturalized - said, "I need to belong to something."

Or maybe it had to do with news that her husband, the Google-able Ralph Romain, having retired and returned to their native Trinidad - alone - in 1996 had a few years later surreptitiously divorced her, and suddenly the island couldn't possibly be big enough for both of them. Not that she had any romantic notions about quitting the United States in the first place, but citizenship would make sure the United States couldn't quit her, either.

Hurry Up And Wait? No Problem

She filed the forms that set her naturalizing wheels in motion last July. Waiting was interspersed with flurries of activity involving the payment of a $400 fee (which just happens to match the number on the immigration form, N400, it accompanies; good thing there's not a form N15000), background checks and an interview that examines, among other things, the applicant's facility with written and spoken English and knowledge of the federal government and U.S. history.

Romain recalls two of about a half-dozen questions posed by her interrogator: Who is the vice president? Why are there 100 senators?

"I thought they would be more difficult," she says. Describe the causes precipitating the War of 1812, for instance. Cite the responsibilities of the undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs.

And yet, at the end of the two-hour processing ceremony in which 509 immigrants from 68 nations became American citizens - and each of the newly minted was congratulated by a minimum three native-borns - Romain pronounced herself satisfied with the process.

"This is one of the things you do well," she told her entourage before catching herself. "No. This is one of the things we do well."

Instantly, Merle Patricia Bradshaw Romain adds pleasingly to the tapestry of the nation. Widely traveled, well-educated, multilingual, skilled, studiously self-sufficient and, at 74, voracious toward life, Romain personifies about 90 percent of the Department of Homeland Security's post-Sept. 11 wish list.

For her part, Romain says, in a voice rich with the melody of her Caribbean upbringing, "I feel good. I feel honored. I feel pleased. I am glad to be with you."

E Pluribus Everybody, Everywhere

Regarding her background, Romain says, there are two things we should know about the people of Trinidad and Tobago, the island nation off Venezuela's northeast flank. They marry everybody. And they are everywhere.

As to the first, Romain's face may have been created in Trinidad, but it is quintessentially American, the melting pot revealed in a blend of more than a half-dozen nationalities emerging from four continents, minimum: almond eyes, high cheekbones and rosebud lips set in a triangle the color of cafe con leche, lightly dusted with freckles. She is Chinese, Spanish, Welsh, African, American Indian, Scottish and Pakistani. Reared and steadfastly Catholic, she notes very nearly the full array of monotheistic global faiths in her DNA.

In matters spiritual, fealty to the pope had practical benefits. Her resume shows a master's degree in library science from Catholic University and prolonged employment at the Georgetown University libraries of law and medicine. Seeking retirement in Florida after the blizzard of '96 buried Bethesda, she considered Port Charlotte, where friends lived, until Hurricane Gustav boiled up in the western Gulf of Mexico and, for a couple of days, took dead aim.

"What do I need to exchange one headache with weather for another?" Romain reasoned, which explains much of how she came to purchase the stucco house between the cul-de-sac and the No. 3 green at Lake Bernadette - there being, of course, only two possible destinations for newcomers relocating to Florida: Port Charlotte and Zephyrhills.

Ah, but Zephyrhills is comfortably near Saint Leo University, and the university has a library, where she volunteered until she was persuaded to unretire. It is also where Erik Theodore - of Trinidad and formerly of the National Institutes of Health, where he fell under Romain's seductive influence - became Brother Mukasa, a monk in the order of St. Leo.

Romain's house became the off-campus meeting place for Brother Mukasa and Saint Leo's students of the Caribbean. They would cook island delicacies and tell stories of home and of their plans. Romain could not help but think how far this land had come.

Love it as she does now, Romain's first encounter with the United States could scarcely have been worse. Following Professor Romain across the Atlantic after he took a college teaching job in New York in 1960, "I was in the United States the moment I walked on that airplane," and not in a good way, Romain says. She recalls flight attendants who, at the sight of the ethnically mixed young mom managing a dark-skinned toddler and a babe in arms, either were indifferent or openly hostile. For the white mom and her pink baby, they could not have been more solicitous. "I wanted to get on the first plane back to London."

But there was a presidential campaign going on, and Romain was drawn to the young candidate with the awkward accent from Massachusetts. John Kennedy talked with energy about new paths and equal treatment, of strength and purpose and opportunity.

"There was a man who knew the world, I thought," she says. If Americans could elect a man such as this, she knew, the stewardesses from her nightmare flight soon would be yesterday's news.

He was and they were, despite JFK's sudden, tragic end. When Dr. Romain hired on with the World Bank, and the family, now numbering nine, returned in 1971, Merle Romain recognized the fruits of that 1960 campaign. Here, she recognized, was a place to rear children of any color, ethnicity or national origin. The outcome is impressive: Two doctors, an ophthalmologic optician, a lawyer, a public health inspector, an art teacher and a law librarian.

At Last, Yankee Doodle Merle

Finally, the time arrived to fulfill her personal destiny.

"I wasn't living as full a life as I always should have," Romain says. "I couldn't participate for 37 years, but I know I'm not going back to Trinidad."

America had grown much more to her liking, "a cosmopolitan country" fulfilling its reputation as a place for people "to live and dream."

And so, after 37 years of work permits and green cards, of paying taxes and having perfectly American opinions but lacking an official voice, Merle Patricia Bradshaw Romain, daughter of the islands, took the oath. Look out, elected ones.

Together at last, it was easy to see that the new partners, this joyous Romain and this accommodating America, would be more than the sum of their parts.

Columnist Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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