A naturalization ceremony took place at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, it’s the first time OSF has hosted the event.
“It feels pretty exciting,” said citizenship recipient Marianne Narusiewicz.
Narusiewicz was born in Hamburg, Germany, she first came to the states in 1958. She grew up in the circus and spent most of her time traveling with her family. “Then we came back after two years, we couldn’t take the cold anymore!”
Now, all of her siblings live in or around the Rogue Valley. On Monday, at the age of 77, she became a U.S. citizen.
“You don’t become a citizen any day, so it was kind of nice, very nice ceremony I loved it,” she said.
Narusiewicz was one of nearly five dozen local immigrants and their families who came together for the special moment Monday.
“For most of these people, they’ve traveled a really long path to get to where they are and it’s very important to them,” said Quinn Andrus with U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services, “some of them are the last ones in their family to naturalize.”
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