FINNS: An Oral History

Becoming Americans - David Kangas Interview

FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region

Excerpted from FINNS: An Oral History... by Patricia Kangas Ktistes, 1997, all rights reserved.

… the “Ostrobothnian nature” played its own role [in causing higher levels of emigration from Ostrobothnia as compared to other areas of Finland]…. these very characteristics,  a strong social selfassurance [sic], self-confidence and love of  freedom showed forth in very large measure in the temperament  of Ostrobothnian people....  

Finnish national economist O. K. Kilpi

Becoming Americans - David Kangas

David Kangas 

My paternal grandparents had a hard life before immigrating to Worcester, Massachusetts,  where my grandfather John Kangas helped build the community’s first Apostolic Lutheran church. In  Finland, he worked in sub-freezing weather cutting logs and in summer long hours for the landlord.  My grandmother’s father, old man Kero, was a traveling salesman and alcoholic and his family had to  beg from house to house while he was on his trips. Knock on the door: “Do you have any food? Do  you have any clothes?” That’s what my grandmother Sannamaija grew up with. There were many  beggars in the Finnish countryside. In wintertime, the girls in her family had no shoes but went outside  barefoot to tend the cows. Their feet were so cold that when the cows took a crap, the girls would  stand in the fresh manure just to warm their feet up.  

Most Finns came here from Oulu and Ostrobothnia, the area of most fanatical opposition to  the Russians. My Grandfather Kangas came from Ruha, south of Lapua. I don’t know why Lapua was  anti-Communist because a lot of workers around Tampere, just down the road, were militant  Communists. Many immigrant Finns were leftist. My father’s uncle down in Worcester was a  Communist. When I was 14 or 15, I wanted to go visit the ‘Red Herring.’ My mother wanted to go,  too, but my father said, “No interest. None.” I knew it was because decades ago, his father and this  Red uncle got into a bitter argument in the kitchen and almost came to a fist fight. This uncle wanted  Otto Kuusinen, Stalin’s henchman, to take over Finland. This uncle had to go out and sit in the car for  awhile. When he returned, his wife said, “Don’t discuss this politics anymore. It just causes trouble.”  

My paternal and maternal grandparents all attended the Apostolic Lutheran Church before  breaking off to form the Independent Apostolic Lutheran Church. When I was growing up, Apostolic  Finns had little interest in Finnish culture. Russia had been ruling Finland and there didn’t exist the  same sentiment we now think of as national loyalty. Their attitude around the time of emigration was,  ‘We don’t want anything to do with Finland and the state church. The state church is dead.’ That’s why  they practiced religious and social separatism over here.

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