LE ROY — A hurricane brought Clarence Dassrath to Kansas.
In the late 1980s, the Trinidad native was living in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands.
“Hurricane Hugo wiped out 90 percent of St. Croix in 1989,” Dassrath said.
Amidst the chaos, he received a call from his mother and four brothers, who had earlier moved to Minneapolis, Minn.
“My mom said, ‘Come up,’” Dassrath said.
With a world of destruction around him, Dassrath, a skilled tool and die machinist and petroleum engineer, made the switch from tropic denizen to northlander.
“It was so cold,” he said of the Minnesota climate. “It was the first time I saw snow.”
After a few months of the cold, Dassrath had had enough. He called Wick Huffington, a former neighbor from St. Croix who had moved his family to Texas after the hurricane.
Huffington invited Dassrath down.
“I gave away all the things I had acquired to my brothers and started driving,” Dassrath said.
Before he did, though, he researched potential employers along the route, focusing on businesses in warmer climes.
One of the businesses was American Metal Products, a former holding of Iola’s Tramec Corporation.
There, he met with the owners of the business.
Impressed by Dassrath’s skills, “They hired me and I stayed and worked there seven years,” Dassrath said.
He found housing in Le Roy and quickly became entrenched in the community, forming a youth soccer league and making fast friends with whom he is still in touch.
Dassrath returned to Le Roy this week from Trinidad, where he works as a machinist, visiting his old friends and taking in the scenery.
“I may have been born in Trinidad,” he said, “but my heart is in America.”
Le Roy stayed in his heart
