Rahul Iyer,
Mesa , AZ.

I graduated high school from Dixon IL, a small town halfway between Rockford and Moline, in the Northwestern part of Illinois. Dixon IL is a small town, and boyhood home of former President Ronald “Dutch” Reagan. Cornfields surrounded the town. I am the son of two medical doctors who practiced in the small town of Dixon IL. I was the only Asian Indian in my graduating class in High School. We were functionally assimilated into American life; but we were not socially or politically assimilated into American life. I had a middle to upper middle class upbringing in the down of Dixon IL.

To others, in regard to religion, we were misunderstood (we are Hindu). We were different. We looked different. We ate different foods. We had the money to be called upper middle class, but we did not fit in with others socially. We were different.