In this year 2026, the year of America’s 250th birthday, President Reagan's quote never has been more true. We see lawlessness and chaos around us largely because of four years of open borders which brought millions of people into America from around the world without the safeguards of the laws that govern our immigration system. This disregard for our laws threatens our safety, and that threatens our freedom. There can be no freedom if our sidewalks are not safe.
My family lived under Nazi rule in occupied Holland from 1940 to 1945. I grew up listening to their stories of war and life under Nazi rule. My sister would tell of riding her bicycle into the countryside to bargain with farmers to bring something home for the family to eat during the Hunger Winter of 1944–45. Twenty thousand Dutch people starved to death in that time.
There is a lot of talk of freedom in America, talk of our Rights.
My parents were free, until one day they weren't.
How do you react when one day your life is normal, and the next, tanks are rolling through your streets. If you haven’t experienced losing your freedom, it is an abstract idea and not tangible. If you have experienced that loss, then freedom takes on a whole new meaning.
While Holland was still rebuilding after the end of the war, my parents, in their fifties, took advantage of the opportunity to start life over in America. We came as a family, mother, father, and three of their five children. My sister came with her family two years later. My oldest brother stayed in Holland with his family.
We did not have America in our genes. We learned about America in school and in the marketplace. For my father, who owned his own business in Holland, America was a land with elbow room. As a child in school the thing that made the biggest impression on me was the concept that in America, Lady Justice wore a blindfold. Every person was accorded the same rights and protection under the law regardless of stature, finances, or family.
I believe this is what motivates so many immigrants. They believe in America as that land of opportunity. They believe in American exceptionalism. They are not jaded by the idea that it won’t work for them. If you think the deck is stacked against you it is.
If you believe in the promise of America, it’s there for the taking.
Through the promise of freedom, your destiny is in your own hands. Success or failure is determined by you.
Our recent experience with the pandemic casts a different light on some of these beliefs. I think that is why the COVID shutdowns were so egregious, so un-American. I went to Lansing several times to join protests at the steps to the Capital to advocate for relaxation of the extreme measures.
I remember Operation Grid Lock. People came from all over Michigan to tie up the streets of Lansing because the nonsensical COVID rules created gridlock in our lives. I remember everybody involved had a great time. While in Lansing one of the things you could always count on at these gatherings was a contingent of folks from Southeast Asia. These folks were there faithfully because they had lived under oppression and didn’t want to see what they had left, creep into America.
No one knows the danger or recognizes the signs of oppression better than those who have lived under it.
America’s ruling document is the Constitution; with its checks and balances it establishes the laws that govern the land. America works because the Constitution guarantees personal liberty, natural rights granted by God to every human being. This contract works when people acknowledge they will live by the rules set forth in the Constitution, take responsibility for themselves, and respect the personal liberty of their neighbors within that Constitution.
When I look at my family I see that America at work. My father tried starting a business, but lake fish and ocean fish are two different worlds. For several years before he reached retirement age he took a factory job. My mother worked as a housekeeper. Together they saved their money, bought property, and built a house. With no business headaches, he could go home after work and tend to his house and plant a great garden.
Of my two brothers, one worked as a designer for a local industry. The other went to college, worked in sales and marketing, and now has his own business as a financial advisor. My brother-in-law worked a variety of jobs and then, returning to skills he brought from Holland, started a bike shop selling and repairing bicycles. I had my own small business doing alterations, am a mom, and got into politics.
We have all been successful in our own way, which is the promise of America. Each attained his own degree of success, each found his own niche, and each lived his American dream.
Geri McCaleb was born in the Netherlands, the youngest of 5, and came to America with her family in 1951. Her hometown, Scheveningen, is a beach town near DE Hague on the North Sea. Her parents found a home in Grand Haven, a beach town on Lake Michigan. Her family lived through the years of Nazi occupation in Holland, and she grew up on stories of hardship and survival during those war years. It shaped her thinking and showed her the importance of faith in God and freedom. Geri served on Grand Haven City Council for 8 years, 2001 until 2009. She decided to run for Mayor in 2011 and served 4 terms ending in 2019. After her time with the city, she was a Community Columnist for the Tribune for several years. She and her husband and have 2 children and 4 grandchildren and now live in Grand Haven Township.
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