CLEVELAND, Ohio – The naturalization ceremony that opened One World Day at the Cleveland Cultural Gardens on Sunday summed up the spirit of the celebration.
“America is a nation of immigrants,” Judge J. Philip Calabrese told a crowd of about 100 people gathered in the morning rain as they watched more than two dozen people officially receive U.S. citizenship.
The ceremony is the first major event of this year’s One World Day, the annual festival held for the 78th consecutive year by and at the Cleveland Cultural Gardens on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and East Boulevard.
“It celebrates the best of us,” Sheila Murphy Crawford, a former president of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, said at the ceremony.
The new US citizens come from countries such as Brazil and Ghana, Somalia and Bhutan, the Dominican Republic and the Philippines. They can now register to vote in the US elections, and most of them are expected to take advantage of this opportunity.
A participant in the naturalization ceremony explained to his child: “All people here are trying to become citizens of this country, just like me.”
One World Day is like an international festival that showcases all of Cleveland’s international “cultural facets,” according to Dr. Wael Khoury, president of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens.
Those flavors can be on display later in the day at the Parade of Flags, which moves through the winding gardens along MLK Jr. Drive, where 52 communities, including those represented in the gardens and those not represented there, showcase their culture and heritage through traditional dress, music and dance.
At what other parade can you hear Scottish bagpipers and Korean drummers, see traditional Mexican and Chinese dancers, and admire traditional costumes from Iran and Croatia? They march side by side through Cleveland’s gardens in a grand celebration.
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The gardens have seen renewed interest and growth over the past decade, with numerous developments occurring in the past year alone, including the inauguration of the Pakistani Cultural Garden, the installation of statues such as the Vietnamese Lady in the Vietnamese Cultural Garden and four other plaques in the Serbian Cultural Garden, and the groundbreaking of the Colombian Cultural Garden.
The green light was recently given for the development of two more gardens: a Palestinian garden and, as of last Monday, a Bangladeshi garden, said Lori Ashyk, the gardens’ executive director.
After the parade, visitors have the opportunity to stroll through the individual gardens and admire their sights.
Several gardens offered food and beverages, including a “Sundae School Bus” for ice cream in the African American Cultural Garden, pizzelle cookies in the Italian Cultural Garden, and Lebanese cakes in the Lebanese Cultural Garden.
“There is nothing like this anywhere in the world,” Khoury said. “We hope that one day the Cleveland Cultural Gardens will become a national landmark.”
Many gardens hosted events for their own communities, such as coffee ceremonies at the Ethiopian Cultural Garden and Irish step dancing at the Irish Cultural Garden. Others provided space for others, such as the Persian dancers at the Slovenian Cultural Garden – or a place to have fun, such as the Rubik’s Cube challenge at the Hungarian Cultural Garden.
The family-friendly event also featured a Children’s Village, where children had the opportunity to try out various orchestral instruments, play games and receive giveaways from the Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Cavaliers and the Cleveland Public Library.
Zachary Smith is the data reporter for cleveland.comYou can reach him at [email protected].
