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Earn points towards special rewards and more at David's bridal.com. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. And we love to hear your story.
Send them to ouramericanstories.com. Up next, a story from Kevin Sammy, the son of Indian American immigrants who appeared in Forbes 30 Under 30 for law and policy in 2016. Today, Kevin shares with us the story of his family's love for the sport he played, football, and why they value his education so much.
Take it away, Kevin. You know, I grew up in Canton, Ohio. I am first generation Indian American. So my mom and dad, they emigrated from rural South India. My dad came to the United States to do his doctorate. He ended up moving to Ohio to work at a company as an engineer and that's where I was born.
And I had what I believe is a pretty archetypal Midwest upbringing in a lot of ways. I played football in high school and I ended up playing in college, too. I don't think I would have if not for the fact that I grew up so close to the Hall of Fame and the culture there was so deeply steeped in football.
I didn't know I would be as good as I was. Playing in college is difficult to do and I say that to give credit to everyone who makes it to Division One ball. You know, my parents, they really wanted to learn the game after I became interested in it, after I started to do well and I got looks from colleges. I was, you know, all state for two years in the state of Ohio which is, you know, known for good football. It went from me trying my hand in it to there would be Indian families that would come from different parts of the state and around the region who'd come watch my high school games just as a function of being now interested in this game.
They didn't have any other reason to be, let's say, before. During the Thanksgiving, the Turkey Bowl, the Thanksgiving game that NFL plays every year, all of the Indian families would come to my house because my dad would teach them the rules, teach them how the game worked. There are fewer things I feel more strongly about in terms of what have shaped me than the game of football. I very much grew up in the way that I think we all hope America to be. One that is not always but predominantly accepting of difference, where this sort of multicultural experiment is more or less working. I mean, Google co-founder was a refugee, but an enormous amount of American winners of Nobel Prizes are immigrants. It's an amazing place where that type of reality exists. I should say, segue into my parents.
I mean, part of the reason I got involved in politics latched on to Barack Obama's candidacy is he talked about his famous DNC speech that really launched him into the public ether. He talked about his father's family farming goats in Kenya. My dad's family farm goats in India.
India is a fascinating place, largest democracy on the planet. The caste system in India was a vestige of British rule and it doesn't officially exist, but the caste system is still a kind of unfortunate vestige of the past that has some kind of relevance in modern Indian society. So my family is from a relatively lower caste. We are not from the higher caste, if you will.
The reason I say that is, you know, I am from a lineage of meat-eating farmer, South Indian people, uneducated. My mom and dad were the first in their families to really go to school. My father was the first to go to any school, let alone higher education. You know, he grew up in a village with no running water, no electricity.
Nobody could read. It was an illiterate community. There was a neighboring village where there was one guy that used to call him in, you know, my parents' mother tongue, Tamil. They used to call him the reading uncle because he was the one guy within, you know, however many mile radius that could kind of read. So people would bring him letters or the very small amount of things that needed to be read. They'd bring him that collateral, that content to translate or to read for them.
There's a moment in my dad's childhood where there were a handful of little kids, one of which was him, and some of the parents thought to themselves, look, let's pay this guy a few rupees a month, right, to teach our kids, you know, basic basic Tamil, basic literacy. They kind of hollowed out a little clay less than 500 square foot space that was a temple with some old idols and things in there that, God knows how long they've been there. Took some things out and they bring sand from the river bed to coat the floor so it was fresh and soft and malleable. And they would use their fingers to write in the sand as a chalkboard and to do letters and numbers. And when the sand was coarse, when it was a hotter day or it wasn't soft anymore, their fingers would bleed.
And so it's kind of an indigenous vegetable in the area that they would crack open and they would put on their fingers like thimbles and to protect them after they started to bleed to keep continuing their lessons. That's how my dad learned how to read. He ended up going to a nearby government school that was 13 kilometers away.
His father, my grandfather, saved money for a year to buy a bike so he could bike there. One thing led to the next to the next and education was really a way out of that type of poverty. I'll just say, you know, very much so the American dream.
I mean, he came to the United States to give his family a better shot, to sort of raise the quality of life by an order of magnitude. I think my appreciation for being American is so rooted in that. And how is it, you know, I don't blame people for not knowing.
I wish, I wish I could show them. But how is it that you can't appreciate the value of a place like the United States when you can see how far you can go? It is that possibility that is what makes this place special. And yeah, you know, I spoke a little about football, but the game meant so much to me.
It really built me. And a special thanks to Faith Buchanan and Monty Montgomery for the editing and post-production of this story. And a special thanks also to Kevin Sami for sharing in the end his father's and mother's story and the American dream story that so many immigrants come here to pursue. And today Kevin works at R-Zero, a company moving the ball forward on biosafety. To find out more about what he's up to at that company, go to rzero.com.
That's rzero.com. How can you not appreciate or value this country when you see how far you can come, said Kevin about America. His father, well, no running water in his community, the first in his family to even have the ability to read. Comes to America, becomes an engineer and that next generation, oh my goodness, you know the rest of the story.
You just heard it. A terrific story about the American dream, about poverty, about immigration, and about the ability of America to absorb different people from different places. Kevin Sami's story here on Our American Story. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring inspiring stories from across this great country. Stories from our big cities and small towns, but we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to our americanstories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
Go to our americanstories.com and give. Clean water access helps kids soak up childhood. Girls can be in class instead of walking hours for water.
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