Ancestry Magazine

My mother and I would buy groceries every week at Spot Cash Grocery. As Mom shopped, I would peek around the meat counter and watch the butcher work. He had the largest hands and feet I had ever seen, and he spoke with a heavy accent. I was a little afraid of this stern-looking, powerful man but not enough to keep from watching.

One day he laid his cleaver on the butcher’s block, came around the meat counter, wiped his hands on his bloody apron, and said, “Little one, why you always watch Otto?” Before I could get my feet to move, he continued with a laugh in his voice and a twinkle in his eyes. “So, maybe little one want be butcher, like Otto?”

Otto may have been sorry he broke the silence once he found that he would be answering questions from this very inquisitive little girl for years to come. “Where did you come from, Otto? How did you get to America? Tell me again how you lost Emma.” And the most important question, “Why did you leave your home and your family?”

Otto’s answer? “You sit on stool, little one, and Otto will tell story.” And, as Otto chopped and hacked away on his butcher’s block, his story unfolded.

Estonia was established as an independent country in 1918, about the time Otto was born. His family had a small farm and enjoyed a simple life until Russia took over the country in 1940. A year later, just as Otto had married Emma, Germany began its occupation of Estonia.

Estonia’s future looked bleak, so Otto’s family encouraged the newlyweds to flee to America. Otto and Emma scraped together what resources they could, traveled at night to reach the coast, and bought passage on a freighter leaving Estonia—had they been discovered, the repercussions would have been disastrous to Otto, Emma, and their families.

But as soon as they were on the open sea, Otto and Emma thought the most dangerous part of their journey was over—until the bombs began to fall. Their freighter was destroyed. Otto clinged to a piece of debris and floated in the ocean for several days before being rescued by an American ship. He didn’t know what had happened to Emma.

The American ship brought Otto to New York City where he found lodging with his cousins. As often as he could, he would look for Emma until finally he gave up his search and decided to leave for Texas and start a new life. His cousins, however, promised to keep searching for Emma.

Otto walked until his shoes wore out, then he cut cardboard for soles and continued to walk south. He would work for money to eat, and sometimes he would be lucky enough to catch a ride in a boxcar. Eventually Otto made his way to a small rural community in North Texas where he became Otto, the butcher.

Emma, it turned out, was also rescued, but her ship docked in South America. There she found work to support herself, and, in time, she was able to save enough money to buy passage to America—that’s when Otto’s cousins finally found her.

It was a joyous reunion—neither Otto nor Emma thought they would ever see the other again. The reunited couple returned to Otto’s Texas home where they bought a small farm and raised their children to be good citizens of America.

Otto also told me why he and Emma risked their lives to immigrate to the United States. “I come to America for the children, he said. “Here, all children have education. Here, all children have opportunity. Here, Emma and Otto can make good life and children can make good life.”

Otto’s message is simple—we are all blessed to live in America. And his hope for a better life for himself and his family is the same hope that our founding fathers had when they established this nation, and the same hope that America continues to promise both her immigrants and her citizens.

And I for one know that I will always be grateful to Otto for allowing this “little one” to sit on a stool next to his butcher’s block at Spot Cash Grocery and listen to his story—one that articulates so clearly the precious freedom each of us still enjoys in America today.