Cross & Crescent

The Statue of Liberty is one of our most treasured memorials. For the world, it represents freedom; for immigrants, it represents opportunity; and for its citizens, it represents independence. But for Steven A. Briganti (Butler 1964), the Statue of Liberty represents everything we are or would like to be as a nation.

On July 4, 1986 — the statue’s 100th birthday — President Ronald Reagan declared, “We are the keepers of the flame of liberty; we hold it high for the world to see.”

As president and CEO of The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Foundation, Briganti is the one responsible for keeping the flame lit.

Under his leadership, The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Foundation has raised $500 million, restored the Statue of Liberty and multiple buildings on Ellis Island, and digitized 22 million immigrant records.

Hope for the Future

Between 1892-1924, millions of people arrived by boat at Ellis Island processing centre in hopes of becoming American citizens. They were each greeted by a 305-foot copper and steel statue that was erected on October 28, 1886, as a gift from France.

“Forty percent of the American population can trace at least one ancestor through Ellis Island,” says Briganti, who shares a passion for history.

“It is on this spot where our lives in this country began,” he says. “Most of us came from somewhere else. We were either poor or persecuted, and were seeking a better way of life. And this country has allowed us to have a better way of life.”

All of Briganti’s grandparents, as well as his mother, first arrived at Ellis Island. “I think about them whenever I visit,” he says. “At the turn of the last century, it was a monumental structure. It had electricity, which many people had never seen. But mostly, it had hope for the future.”

Many people have passed under her towering torch. As the statue neared its 100th birthday, President Ronald Reagan appointed Lee Iacocca to head up a private sector effort to restore the Statue of Liberty. In 1982, Iacocca appointed Briganti to lead the project.

Fundraising began for the $87 million restoration under a public/private partnership between the National Park Service and The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation.

“It started in a rather unusual way,” says Briganti referring to the Foundation’s beginnings. “No feasibility study, no existing organization, no nothing really. We just sort of started up.”

Though Briganti and his team wanted to restore both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, they soon realized the scale of the project at hand. “We knew we needed to restore the Statue of Liberty, but we weren’t sure about Ellis Island,” he says. “Ellis Island has 27 buildings on 33 acres, so it’s a big place. We realized we couldn’t get everything done all at once.”

The first campaign focused on restoring the Statue of Liberty, which was unveiled on July 4, 1986. The second, third, and fourth campaigns focused on Ellis Island; the most significant being the opening of an Immigration Museum in 1990.

“The Restoration of Ellis Island was — and I think still is — the largest historic restoration in American history,” says Briganti, who proudly states that “for this project and for the Statue of Liberty, we never took any government money. All of the funding came from the private sector; either from corporations, foundations, private individuals, or through licensing.”

Accessing History

Since its opening in 1990, the Ellis Island Immigration Museum has attracted 25 million visitors. But that number pales in comparison to Briganti’s most recent project: the digitizing of all records of arrivals through to the port of New York.

Consisting of some 500 million pieces of historical information, this project may be his greatest accomplishment to date, attracting 8 billion visitors since going online.

The American Family Immigration History Center launched online in 2001. This searchable database contains the ship passenger records of 22 million people who entered through the Port of New York and Ellis Island from 1892-1924, the peak years of immigrant processing at Ellis Island.

Every ship that docked at Ellis Island had to produce a manifest, which contained the name, age, height, condition of health, and several other pieces of information about every passenger. Most of this historical paperwork was stored on microfiche in Washington, DC, inaccessible to all but the most diligent historian or genealogist.

Digitizing these records seemed to be an insurmountable challenge. “We started the record center project in 1996,” says Briganti. “At first, we did not plan to put it on the web, for it was only going to exist at Ellis.”

The Mormon Church, which has a particular interest in genealogy, offered to get involved in the project. Eventually, the church and Briganti’s foundation realized the scale of the project and the importance of making its content accessible online.

“In all, it took 12,000 volunteers and 5.6 million hours to digitize 22 million immigrant histories,” says Briganti. Visitors from all over the world are now able to access 11 fields of digitized information, view and obtain reproductions of original ship manifests, and even add annotations to passenger and ship records.

Working With Others

Like many immigrants, Briganti’s childhood began in New York City. His family, however, relocated to Warsaw, Indiana, by the time he entered high school. Feeling at home in the Midwest, he enrolled at Butler University.

A high school buddy of his, Seth Lewis, introduced Briganti to Lambda Chi Alpha. “I didn’t move in my first semester because I was already living on campus,” he says. “But I lived in the house my remaining three years.”

His leadership qualities soon became evident, for he eventually became chapter president. “In that position, you had to listen to a lot of different ideas,” recalls Briganti. “You had to try to be fair to everybody in making decisions for the house. It was helpful to me in developing an ability to be fair and logical.”

Fraternities and Ellis Island have a lot in common. They both consist almost entirely of people coming from somewhere else. They also represent new beginnings and opportunities. Lastly, they instill a sense of place when people look back at the pivotal transitioning point in their lives.

“You move in to a house with a large group of people and you learn how to get along with them, to work with them, and to build a community,” says Briganti. “It’s a good training place. I think that is the value of fraternity; at least it was for me.”

Since the closing of Ellis Island as a port of entry in 1954, there has been a dramatic change in the ethnicity of this country. “By the year 2050, estimates are that white European Americans -– people of European background -– will be just one more minority in this country,” says Briganti. “I hope our fraternities are a part of this ethnic change.”

“We are a nation of immigrants,” he says. “Whether we came over the Bering Strait or whether we came from Europe, we are a unique nation in the world; a nation that was built almost entirely of people coming from somewhere else, and we need to celebrate that.”