Page 10 - AACL 25th anniversary

Anniversary Celebration of
Albanian American Civic League
HON. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN represents Florida’s 18th District
in the U.S. House of Representatives. The descendants of her mother’s Jewish family escaped the Spanish Inquisition and found refuge in Turkey, before immigrating to Cuba. Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1952. When she was eight years old, her family fled the Communist regime to the United States, settling in Miami. After graduating from Southwest High School, she earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in education from Florida International University and a Ph.D in Education from the University of Miami. Following a career in teaching, during which she founded and served as the principal of a private bilingual elementary school in Hialeah, Florida, she decided to enter public service. In 1982, Ros-Lehtinen was elected to the Florida State House of Representatives and in 1986 to the Florida Senate, becoming the first Hispanic woman to serve in either body. In 1989, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first Hispanic woman to serve in the US Congress. A senior member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, she served as chair of the Committee from 2008 to 2012. She is currently the chair of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. For many years, Ros-Lehtinen has supported the right of self-determination for Albanians in the Balkans. In 2005, the Albanian American Civic League awarded her its Balkan Peace Award. In September 2014, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen chaired the briefing on the crisis in Macedonia in the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats. She is married to Dexter Lehtinen, and is the mother and step-mother of four adult children and the grandmother of three baby girls.
HON. CHARLES SCHUMER was elected to the US Senate in 1998,
and has been New York’s senior senator since Daniel Patrick Moynihan retired in 2000. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School in 1974. At the age of 23, he won a seat in the New York State Assembly, and in 1980 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and represented the 9th District in Brooklyn and Queens for eighteen years. Senator Schumer is Ranking Member of the Senate Rules Committee, and he also serves on the Committees on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and the Judiciary Committee, where he is Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security. Since 2006, he has served as Vice-Chair of the Democratic Conference, the number three position on the Democratic Leadership Team. Senator Schumer has been a strong advocate for the rights of Jews, Albanians, and other ethnic groups that have faced oppression and genocide. In 1995, he was keynote speaker at the Albanian American Foundation and Civic League’s salute to Albanian tolerance resistance, and hope on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps. On November 27, 2012, he introduced S.Res. 601 in the US Senate, “commending Albanians in Albania and Kosova for protecting and saving the lives of all Jews who either lived in Albania or sought asylum during the Holocaust.” Senator Schumer has two daughters, Jessica and Alison, and he resides in Brooklyn with his wife, Iris Weinshall.
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Saluting Albanian Religious Tolerance in an Age of Intolerance