Gerda Stevenson, 82, had no idea how her life was going to unfold when she first came to America from Germany to work for the German ambassador, Wilhelm Grewe, back in 1958.
“I did not know what I was to expect from America, all I knew, as a little girl, was that you never went hungry,” Stevenson said.
“I was born in 1939, before World War II, so those 15 years of my early life were very, very, very hard and very challenging. And so for that reason, I jumped on this opportunity.”
Stevenson, who was in her early 20s and working in Washington, D.C., began efforts to become a U.S. citizen right away.
“It took a lot of paperwork, and a lot of help from good German friends I had made and they helped me to get everything I needed,” Stevenson said. “I had to have a bank account and no criminal record in either country. I had to have reasons why I wanted to stay in this country.”
Within six months she attended night school to learn how to read and speak English and to study the U.S. Constitution. “I did not need a sponsor, I became my own sponsor. And that was hard.”
Stevenson met her husband at a dance in Washington, D.C., and after two and a half months, traveled to New Hampshire to marry him. After 8 years she completed her immigration and became a U.S citizen.
Although Stevenson’s life got better after moving to America, she still faced many problems due to the discrimination against Germans at the time.
“It took me five years to be accepted in Concord, in spite of having married into family here,” Stevenson said. “Nevertheless, I was not accepted. I was labeled a Nazi, and it was very, very hard for me. But after five years, and having two children at that time, that helped me go on forward.”
One of the German Christmas traditions Stevenson brought with her was decorating her tree with 24 lit wax candles. The couple’s four children grew up loving her German cooking and baking.
Deepening ties to the community through her children’s school and activities “really brought me closer to people in Concord,” Stevenson said.
Today, she remains very active.
“In my early 50s, I became a runner,” Stevenson said. “I did Mount Washington three times.”
She even convinced her husband to be more active with her.
“I taught my husband how to go for a walk every Sunday afternoon in 1961, which was tradition in Germany,” Stevenson said. “It was difficult, but I did get him to move for a walk, and from that he became an ice climber and rock climber, an outdoorsman. So I can say that was I.”
Stevenson returns to Germany for occasional visits, but she’s as happy here now as she was when she first arrived and fell in love with this part of New England.
“Vermont and New Hampshire really represented, to me, the Black Forest. I came from Freiburg, down in the Southwest part of Germany, and that’s a beautiful region of Germany,” Stevenson said.
This profile is part of a series written by students in Linda Lawson’s journalism class at Concord High School, as part of a collaborative community storytelling project with the Concord Multicultural Festival and Report for America.