This Latvian sailor

He called himself Jacob Paul Linn. He was born in Riga, Latvia and came to the USA from Argentina in 1909, a ship's boy. He worked his way up to ship's captain by the time he was 28, when he fell in love with a well-brought-up nurse from Virginia, married her, moved to Ohio and left the sea for a floor-sanding business. He got sick of Ohio weather and moved to Florida with his beloved and their three sons, where he went back to the sea he had always loved, though he stayed rooted at home: no long trips, he worked the banana boats. Until 1941. Shortly after the massacre of Jews in Riga, he joined the merchant marine as a ship's captain (again) and began sailing dangerously across the Atlantic, dodging German torpedoes. He died after bravely rescuing a number of his men, physically carrying them up a ladder to safety after an engine explosion in 1942.  

The great question in the family has always been: was he Jewish? Why didn't he ever talk about his family in Latvia? What was his surname before it was Linn? Why was he in Argentina? Why don't we know if he had siblings, who his people were? Why is it all so secret? His eldest son impregnated my mother in 1944, at which time his widow made her way all the way from Florida to North Carolina to offer my mother the incredible sum of $1000 if she would have an abortion. My paternal grandmother feared I would bring shame to the family; she had bigger plans for her first-born son than my mother. But my mother, whether out of plain cussedness or something else difficult to understand, refused the money. Had me in shame.

I never met my father. But in 2008, after I retired, I began to search for him and his people. I found he had died in 1991, but I learned about him, about my five six half-siblings, my many cousins, my gay uncle David, and the mystery of our grandfather. Just today, this package arrived from my cousin Lori. Our grandfather. I see him in my son, Seth. Seth looks nothing like his father or my father; not much like me. But he looks very much like this dashing ship's captain from Latvia.