Page 60 - MASALA VOL 8 ISSUE 3 DECEMBER 2016 – JANUARY 2017

Looking back, I feel bad

about changing my name,

losing my identity, but I

had to do it to assimilate
in my profession and in

my new country

Kanwaljit came to another crossroad in his life in northern Through his journey from Korat to Eureka, Kenneth says he
California. “Looking back, I feel bad about changing my met all the right people at the right time to get all those jobs so
name, losing my identity, but I had to do it to assimilate in my he could succeed. “I have no regrets,” he says. “But if I knew
profession and in my new country,” he says. On the Medical then what I know now, I probably would not have done it. For
Board of Trustees of the tribe, he met Jennifer Singleton, and me to compete in my profession I had to be better than any
asked her if he could use her surname. “She told me it would be white counterpart. I had to do better or be equal to be given any
her honour.” Kanwaljit became Kenneth Singh Singleton. preferential treatment.

Kenneth came back home to Thailand in 1976, and all was Despite his tiresome and challenging journey, Kenneth feels
forgiven with his family, as his father was proud of all the that his path wouldn’t be as fruitful in any other country. “The
success he had attained on his own. Later that year, he married U.S. is the land of opportunity,” he clarifies. “I went there with
a Thai-Indian from Bangkok, Ravinder Kaur Virasingh, and US$1,000 in my pocket 40 years ago and I went to all those
returned to the Hoopa Valley tribe with his new wife. “At first, she schools, to the reservation and now I’m in Eureka where I
became bored,” he says. “There’s not much to do in a town with started my own practice.”
only 900 people. So she volunteered, got hired by the tribe and
went to nursing school. She’s now a nurse practitioner.” It wasn’t Kenneth Singh Singleton is a U.S. immigrant success story. He
long after, in the late 1970s, that Kenneth and his wife moved and his wife have two daughters. The oldest, Emilie, graduated
to Eureka about 70 miles away, where he gradually set up his from UC Davis with a degree in civil engineering and now works
dental practice there. for a consulting engineering firm in Folsam, California. His
younger daughter, Anita, is currently in college in Los Angeles.
“America is the most giving country, and I am proud of being an
American. What I did to get to America would be hard to do now,
but only in America can you go empty-handed and make it, as
the system is fair. My parents are proud of me, and all is forgiven.
But I do miss my family back in Thailand.”

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