Huso Mehmedovic was initially worried when Cumberland County Judge Albert H. Masland called out his name, singling him out in a crowded room in the Old Cumberland County Courthouse.
Mehmedovic, a Bosnia native, had just been named a United States citizen at a Friday nationalization ceremony. He wasn’t expecting anything else.
But the judge’s wife, Debbie, also was in attendance. And Debbie Masland, a French teacher at Carlisle Area High School, had taught Mehmedovic when he was only 12 years old.
At the time, Debbie Masland was teaching English as a second language, which was why Mehmedovic was in her class.
“He was in one of my first groups,” she said, remembering Mehmedovic as a good student.
And on Friday, she had the evidence to prove it. For years, she held onto papers that Mehmedovic — now an adult, living in Cumberland County and working as a diesel technician — wrote when he was in her class.
After the nationalization ceremony, she handed him a folder filled with his old work, including a paper he wrote explaining why he wanted to be an FBI agent.
Both Mehmedovic and his former teacher had a laugh about that one.
Debbie Masland said she’d saved other student’s work, too. Most of those students were from her first few years teaching Engilsh as a second language, she said.
“They were the ones that meant the most to me,” she said.
Mehmedovic’s mother moved him and his siblings to the United States when he was only a child. On Friday, Mehmedovic explained that the move came shortly after the Bosnian War.
“She just wanted a better life for her family,” Mehmedovic said, explaining that several of his siblings had already naturalized.
He remembered the first months after his move to Carlisle.
“I was sort of cooped up inside,” he said.
In Bosnia, he’d been an active child, spending a lot of time on the farm, and he missed the open space.
But eventually, he found his footing, leading to his choice to remain in the United States and in Central Pennsylvania.
There, on Friday, he was one of 44 people from 29 different countries to become American citizens.
