On my train ride home from Washington DC after attending the Greek Independence Day celebration at the White House, I read a book called “Pittsburgh” that my friend Konstantinos gave me as a gift.

Knowing that I was born and raised in the Steel City and that I was also the son of immigrants, he knew the book would resonate with me. What my friend didn’t know is that I would be reading this book after I had the privilege and honor of being invited to attend an event by the President of the United States, celebrating and honoring the Greek American community.

The book, by acclaimed Greek writer Soti Triantafyllou, was comprised of letters that were sent back and forth in the early 1900s between a girl in a village on the island of Chios and her much older husband who had left the island to emigrate to the United States, working in Pittsburgh.

He was working to raise enough money to eventually send for his young wife and bring her to the new world.

Although my parents came to Pittsburgh much later— my father as a war refugee in the late 1940s and my mother in the 1960s as a seventeen-year-old bride to a man twice her age— reading the book reminded me of my own humble roots.

No matter where I’ve gone, what I’ve experienced in my life— including being invited to the White House— all roads lead to where I came from. This isn’t just the physical place I refer to, as in Pittsburgh, my birthplace.

But this also refers to my immigrant and refugee family heritage and the consciousness I have of the struggles not only my parents faced, but that ALL immigrants and refugees in this country face as they escape the same kins of wars and economic hardship that my parents fled.