06/08/2026
Happy birthday to Sarware Sita Tiwana, celebrating her 99th birthday today! 🎉
Read below about her first day in the U.S. in 1952, when she was 25 years old . . .
“My ‘first day’ in the U.S. is really, for me, two ‘days’: one is when I physically stepped foot first on U.S. soil—which occurred in early 1952 when I was 25 years old and just married. However, over 30 years later, the second ‘first day’ was when I became a U.S. citizen: that was, and remains, an equally important ‘first day’ for me.”
Sarware Sita Tiwana’s *first* first day in the U.S. was in 1952, when she was 25 years old. She and her husband departed from Lahore, Pakistan, and first arrived in San Francisco, California.
What she missed most about life back home was the sense of community, and of friends and relatives always being there with her. It was getting a job at a bank that helped her begin to feel more at home:
“But my salvation came in the form of work. During our time in California, I had decided to apply for my first job and subsequently found one, with a major bank in San Francisco. Working and interacting with different people helped lessen my feelings of homesickness. I created a new circle of friends and support system.”
Today, Sarware Sita Tiwana celebrates her 99th birthday! Please join us in wishing her a very happy birthday and check out the rest of her story about her two first days at saada.org/sarware
