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Epilogue
- University of Washington Press
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Epilogue SINCE MY RETIREMENT AT THE END OF 1995, TERRI and I have been blessed with several wonderful additions to our family . Our fourteenth grandchild, Ceferino Jamero Silverio, was born on March 3,2002;Lauren married Patrick Hoolboom on October 23, 2002; Caryn Swan was welcomed into the clan following her marriage to our son Peter on August 10, 2003; and Roslin Jamero Berganio ,our fifteenth grandchild,came into our lives on April 20,2004, when she was adopted by Jackie and Richard. Terri and I are comfortably settled in Atwater, six miles from my hometown of Livingston. I have kept physically and mentally active—listening to my collection of straight-ahead jazz, following the New York Yankees, gardening in the yard, serving as chairman of my fiftieth high-school reunion,participating in the Filipino American National Historical Society,being the patriarch of the onehundred -strong Jamero clan, and, of course, working on my memoirs . Most important, I am enjoying the company of our children and grandchildren, who gave us a beautiful fiftieth golden wedding anniversary party in October 2003,when our extended families and closest friends gathered to help us celebrate the occasion. If writing my memoirs has pointed out anything to me,it is that I am indeed thankful for what I have experienced in life.In the words of my boyhood hero of the New York Yankees, Lou Gehrig, “I consider myself to be the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” My story could happen only in America: the eldest son of immigrant parents learns about life growing up in a farm-labor camp, goes on to experience the world, and achieves success in his work and personal life. Terri and I must have done something right with our children. They all went to college,have done well in the workplace,are secure in their Filipino identity,and are married and raising their own children with the same values we instilled in them. In short, our children have made us very proud. They have always been our first priority, whether it was deciding where we lived, the job I sought, or the house we bought. My primary purpose in writing these memoirs was to provide my children and grandchildren with a resource from which they could gain a more complete understanding of my experiences growing up brown in America.To that end,I hope I have succeeded. It was also my hope that my story could begin to address the lack of documentation on the experiences of Bridge Generation Filipino Americans, ignored by historians and often unknown to recent arrivals from the Philippines. I hope I have also succeeded in that. I knew the process of developing my memoirs would likely be long and often tedious. It was. What I did not anticipate was that writing my life story would also be uplifting,even cathartic.For this reason, I am glad I decided to tell the story. In this undertaking, I received help from many other people. I am particularly grateful to my daughter Jackie,for the editing and valuable advice;to my daughter Julie, for her technical help; and to Ron Chew, for his unwavering belief in my manuscript.My thanks also go to Fred and Dorothy Cordova, for their inspiration, and to Peter Bacho, for sharing his experiences as a writer of Filipino literature with me. Finally, I would like to express my deep appreciation for emotional and technical support from the love of my life, Terri, without whose help these memoirs would not have been possible. To the person who has been my partner in life for fifty years,I am eternally grateful. peter jamero January 2004 318 epilogue ...