Everyone knows “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” are the most famous lines of Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus.” But what some might not know is the line before it: “From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome.”
I read, and sometimes stared at the bronze plaque inscribed with that poem for eight hours a day, every day, for a year in 2016. Unlike the plaque (and the building it was in), my location was golden: overlooking the New York Harbor, 20 stories off the ground (following 13 flights of intertwining double-helix stairs), chatting with visitors from across the country and around the world about the Statue of Liberty, explaining the symbolism of the tablet (inscribed with July 4, 1776); the lifted foot (breaking from chains); the points on her crown (we simply just don’t know). I was a National Park Ranger, at the Statue of Liberty no less, and during the National Park Service Centennial at that. I and a team of other rangers welcomed a record high of 4.5 million visitors to the Statue that year, often from other countries looking to celebrate the awes and wonders of the national parks system.
