Today I learned about my great-grandfather, Edward Boutros, born in Romieh, a suburb of Beirut when Lebanon was still called Syria, a province of the Ottoman Empire.

Around 1900 he landed in Galveston with $5, a sack of clothes, and the address of a cousin’s house in Austin written on a sign hung around his neck.

In port, he met a man who took him to lunch. Edward didn’t speak English, and kept trying to tell the man he had no money, not understanding the man intended to buy for him.

The cool at the restaurant happened to be another Lebanese immigrant. The cook and the stranger fed Edward, gave him a bag of sandwiches and extra cash and bought him a train ticket to Austin.

There he worked for a few years, saving enough to return to Beirut where he married my great-grandmother, Bidorah. There they had their first three children, including my grandpa.

They came back and settled in Wheeling, WV. There Edward took his eldest son’s advice and opened one of the first tire re-capping plants in the country (people then thought it was crazy to reuse tires).

His four sons would go on to fight the Nazis—my grandpa landing at Utah Beach. In 1946, he was changing a tire at night with his son Asper when another car struck them. His son pushed him out of the way. Edward was blinded, Asper died.

The article about him ended there. It described his business success as an “Alger Story.” But there were other people who—were it not for them—none of it would have happened. The stranger, the cook, Asper.

In the article he said, between his children and grandchildren, he has given this country 21 voters in return for everything given him. That’s what I’ll end this thread on—the most on-brand immigrant grandpa line ever.