Lorie Conway Transcription

December 29, 2007

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors. Today is December 28. Today on Sound Authors we have a winter show planned. Sandwiched between holidays, we are still saturated from Christmas and getting our plans settled for New Years. On the show today, Lorie Conway brings us back to a different time with her documentary hard cover book about Ellis Island.We will also be chatting with Lisa Marie Mercer about getting in shape in the winter. Something we, of course, always think about during holidays. We’ll talk with Sallie Graham about our New Year’s resolutions. Our musical guests are the Get-Up Johns from cold, cold Minnesota.My first guest is Lorie Conway. Welcome to the show.

Lorie Conway: Yes, nice to be here. Thanks very much for asking me.

Dr. Kent: You are an independent producer and filmmaker. You’ve won some awards and your most recent project was called the Forgotten Ellis Island. We can find out more at ForgottenEllisIsland.com. Give me a little sound bite about the project.

Lorie Conway: Sure. Forgotten Ellis Island is the first film and book to be produced about the immigrant hospital that once stood on Ellis Island. It was one of the largest state of the art hospitals in the world at the turn of the century. It was built as over 12 million immigrants landed in New York seeking to become citizens. As you know, they were bringing their dreams and hopes, but they were also bringing contagious diseases, which were in the era before antibiotics. It was a very dangerous combination.

Dr. Kent: As we think about all of our families this holiday, we are all either home or thinking about home. How many people came through Ellis Island?

Lorie Conway: It was the largest port of entry during what we refer to as the great wave of immigration. Twelve million immigrants were coming through New York through Ellis Island. One hundred million Americans alive today, myself included, can trace our routes to those immigrants who came through Ellis Island. So it’s a third of the country that owes their roots to the immigrants who came through New York a century ago.

Dr. Kent: Before we start talking about the hospital itself and all that - my own relatives, my last name is Gustafson - they are all Swedish. We got our name from Ellis Island or somewhere near it. I’m not sure exactly what…our name was Parrison, and there were too many Parrisons that year, is what the legend says. Anyway, my great-grandfather said, “OK, we’ll just be Gustafson”. Do you hear similar stories all the time?

Lorie Conway: Yes, indeed. As I was going through many, many immigrations and medical files, I was finding stories like your grandfather’s, where people’s names were either abbreviated, changed altogether or just a different version was given. They didn’t have a choice. The immigrants were too frightened they were going to be told to be sent back. So they said, “Yes, whatever you want to call me, I will take it”.[laughs]

Dr. Kent: Of course, this journey was treacherous. A lot of people, I’m sure, died on the journey, especially in the early years. When was the hospital founded and why?

Lorie Conway: Sure. Second and third class immigrants were coming in steerage and that indeed was dangerous journey for them, not only physically and mentally. There wasn’t good hygiene on those steam ships, not very much fresh water or food and it was two or three weeks really in the bottom of the steam ship; very, very crowded. It was a big floating petri dish of germs potentially.In fact, I saw one photograph in the National Archives of exterminators with their gas masks on, on the steamship and they were all holding up buckets. One can only imagine the kinds of rodents that were in those buckets. That was the beginning of the immigrant journey was in the steamship. The bowels of these steamships were there was the potential to either catch a disease or perhaps incubate the disease and have a disease or an illness really show its symptoms by the time you were landing in Ellis Island.So, for the 12 million who were coming through, those contagious diseases were presenting a real threat to the rest of the nation. As a result of that, in 1902, this Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, a public health service hospital, funded by the US Public Health Service, but not free to the immigrant patient. They had to pay their own hospital bill, which was very difficult for so many of them. So many came penniless or with just a few dollars to their names.But Immigrant Aid Societies did help many of the immigrants who were hospitalized as well as the Red Cross had a major facility out there and provided social work, clothing, food… You name it. They ran of school on Ellis Island. The hospital really did function for about three decades as 12 million people were coming through. Doctors were being confronted with an array of diseases. Like I said, in the era before antibiotics that was a pretty dangerous thing to have in front of you.

Dr. Kent: I’ve taken - there’s a fun tour if anyone’s ever in New York City. You can take a boat tour all the way around Manhattan. On that journey, of course, we saw Ellis Island. That was the first time I had ever seen it up close. It’s not the largest place in the world.

Lorie Conway: No, it is not. It’s an impressive place and if you are a penniless impoverished immigrant from Europe and you were to be floating up to it, it would look rather grandiose. But you’re right. It isn’t very large. It’s hard to believe that at times, five to 6, 000 immigrants were passing in front of these doctors as they were landing. Daily.

Dr. Kent: Wow!

Lorie Conway: The average was about 2, 500 but during peak immigration years, five to 6, 000 people were on Ellis Island. In fact, one of the quotes in the book says, “At any given day there could be up to 10, 000 people, given all the staff who were coming and going.” So, it was a small city unto itself, there floating in the New York harbor.

Dr. Kent: So, what inspired this film?

Lorie Conway: Well, I saw, or read a “New York Times” magazine article in 1998. It was titled “The Other Ellis Island.” I was riveted to think that a place as iconic as Ellis Island could have untold history. You’d think everything’s been told about Ellis Island. We’ve all seen immigration films. Certainly, we’ve seen the photographs or we’ve visited Ellis Island.But indeed, as I was to find out during the next day’s phone call with someone from the National Parks Service, not only had no one written a book about the Ellis Island Hospital, but there had never been a film produced about the history that was within this hospital. I was just fascinated. What an opportunity for somebody who loves producing historical documentaries as well as this affinity I feel as a granddaughter of somebody who came through Ellis Island.My grandfather wasn’t sick. But I feel like this is a place that belongs to all of us. If there is something untold about it…I just jumped in feet first and haven’t let go. It’s been nine years. [laughs] On and off of researching, filming, applying for grants. It’s been a very difficult challenge to put all the pieces together when there’s no other books written about this place.But I’ve had a wonderful group of advisors helping me piece the puzzle together. My husband’s a scholar and he’s been very helpful in formulating the script. I’ve worked with some really wonderful consultants along the way to create the film and the book. Which, after nine years, it seems like there couldn’t be a better time to tell this story, given…

Dr. Kent: Where can we…

Lorie Conway: …that we now, as a nation of immigrants, facing this issue again.

Dr. Kent: Where can we now expect to see the movie?

Lorie Conway: Well, the film was just premiered on Ellis Island, late October. Elliott Gould is the narrator. He was there. One of the immigrant patients who I interviewed at Ellis Island during one of my many shoots was also there, 85-years -old. We’re all hopeful. PBS is reviewing the film as well as other major cable stations. I’m hopeful that distribution and broadcasts will be sometime early to mid 2008.There are clips from the film, however, on ForgottenEllisIsland.com. There’s many clips, many photographs, never before published photographs of immigrants that I found at various institutions. What’s pretty fascinating is, many immigrants are unnamed in these photos. I’d love to see if people can begin to identify some of these immigrant patients and some of these immigrants in these images.Perhaps they’re your relatives. I don’t know. They were in public domain files in Washington and New York. I’d love to get some more stories from people about the people in these photographs.

Dr. Kent: What are the years the hospital was open?

Lorie Conway: It opened in 1902. Really, by the early 1930s, it was obsolete because by then, America had closed its gates to all but a favored few. Especially, the Italians, the Jews, the Slavs. After WWI, we had less tolerance for Southern and Eastern Europeans. As a result, the National Origins Act was in place. By the late 1920s, that great wave of immigration was slowed to a trickle.So really, the immigrants that the hospital was serving, no longer were allowed into America. As a result, only nine of the 22 buildings were left open. Over the course of the next several decades, after WWII, the Army, Air Force and Marines went there for convalescing. The GIs were there. Then the FBI had an office there on Ellis Island for awhile. But by 1954, the 22 hospital buildings were abandoned.By the time I got there in 1998, it was rather Titanic-like walking down those hallways. Empty. Yet, you felt the ghosts. You felt as though something significant had happened out there. These long hallways, these massive wards, and out these cracked windows at any given turn, there was the Statue of Liberty.I had seen so many photographs of the wards with patients in them. There are many, many photos are in the film, in the book. You can imagine the angst and the anxiety that people felt who were sick. They didn’t know the language and yet, out that window, so close, was that symbol of America. And they couldn’t reach it yet. Not until they were well again were they allowed out of that hospital.

Dr. Kent: In this holiday season, we’ll think about our relatives and check out your beautiful website,ForgottenEllisIsland.com. The book can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell’s, just about anywhere. But go to the website first, ForgottenEllisIsland.com. Thank you so much for being on the show, Lori Conway.[music]