Maria Lupas of Lupas Meats of Broadway Market fame became a United States citizen along with about fifty others yesterday at a ceremony aboard the USS Little Rock yesterday in a ceremony performed by Judge Richard J. Arcara.
From the Buffalo News Article…
Maria Lupas has had 42 years to contemplate becoming a citizen, and she did it with style, giving Arcara a bear hug and posing for pictures with her arm around his shoulders.
Lupas and her husband, Peter, own Lupas Meats in the Broadway Market, and she never quite got around to making her citizenship official.
“I was postponing for a long time. I said, ‘This is the day I have to go,’ ” she recalled. “Before I die, I want to be American citizen.”
She came from then-communist Poland in 1969 and met her future husband at the Broadway Market when he was working for Redlinski Meats. It was love at first sight, with a young cousin interpreting for
her. The couple have two children, Michelle Rozanski and David, who also works at Lupas Meats.
Maria Lupas retired last year, and she was a little afraid of taking the citizenship test.
“I have a hard time with English,” she explained, but that hasn’t been much of a hindrance, given her effervescent personality. “I’m very easy to make friends, wherever I go.”
Congratulations!!!
