After graduating from LHS, I attended the University of Delaware and graduated with a degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Emphasis on Aerospace as I took all of one or two aerospace courses. I married my wife, Jane Sisco (LHS ’76) and moved to the Boston area where we both found jobs and enjoyed time off by traveling to Boothbay, ME to Jane’s family cottage, windsurfing and the occasional bareboat charter sailing to Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Long Island Sound. We bought our first home in Waltham, MA, fixed it up and sold it, and built a home in Mendon, MA – next to college friends. There we continued to windsurf, rode dirt bikes out of our back yard, cross country skied and enjoyed rural life.

While in Massachusetts, we had two boys Bobby and Jake, born 20 months apart. Later on, after the boys were older and more self-sufficient, our daughter, Alina, came home to our family through adoption.

Ever feel nudged, called or otherwise persuaded externally to do something? It happened to me after our two “home-grown” boys were out of their toddler years, in elementary school, more self-sufficient and Jane and I were wondering “what’s next”? I was in church and noticed a friend with his daughter and I was overcome with emotion and a strong nudge to consider adopting a girl. That meant international adoption, and after discussing with Jane and the boys, Bobby and Jake, we decided as a family to pursue it. We have strong Lithuanian roots on Jane’s side and decided to adopt from a Baltic country, and Latvia was the only choice at that time. Three-year story short – we finally were matched with a baby girl, completed paperwork, made travel plans and flew through Poland to Riga, Latvia in February 1998. Think of flying into a post-Soviet country (Latvia declared their independence from the USSR in 1991) that was still transitioning to a democracy and a capitalist economy. We departed from Riga, Latvia very early in the dark morning in a tiny 5 seat car with Tanja, our interpreter, and Alexander, driver.

Have you ever driven through a snowstorm where the snow whizzes past your car like the Millenium Falcon going to lightspeed? That was our 4 – hour drive east from Riga to Daugavpils, Latvia, on the Russian border.

I was concerned about Alexander staying alert at the wheel, so asked him through interpreter Tanja “have you always been a driver”?

Alexander: “No, I graduated with a Physics Degree from a Moscow University”.

Bruce: “what did you do with a Physics Degree”?

Alexander: “well, there’s only one thing a Physics graduate did for the USSR – run a nuclear reactor”.

Bruce: “What did you do”?

Alexander: “I ran the nuclear reactor aboard a Typhoon-class ballistic missile sub, like your George Washington, and I had the second key to launch the nuclear ballistic missiles”.

Bruce: “what do you know about our George Washington”?

Alexander, chuckling: “more than you know about your George Washington”!

Bruce: “oh, yeah, hmmmm…..where were you stationed”?

Alexander: “off the coast of your west coast”.

Bruce: “so let me see if I understand…less than a decade ago, you were an officer on a missile sub with nuclear ballistic missiles aimed at the United States with your finger on the trigger (nearly)”?

Alexander: “Yes, that’s correct. And now I am driving you and your wife to meet your new Latvian daughter – what a wonderful world this is”!

It’s been 27 years since that ride across Latvia with Alexander, Tanja, and Jane, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

We met Alina in the orphanage Director’s office, celebrated with plum wine and a white heavily iced white cake. What do you feed a 20-month-old Latvian orphan? When we asked the Director, she said “the children eat what’s in front of them”. Of course (forehead slap) – they don’t have enough food to be choosy, just to survive. But then the Director added with a smile “but Alina really likes chocolate”. Got it, thanks. We quickly learned she also liked “bananananas” and could eat several in succession.

We had been prepared that they would change Alina into clothes that we bought but when they put her new shoes on, they were huge! Bozo the Clown shoes. So, we negotiated for her existing shoes and back to Riga we drove, with our new daughter between us, with only her first name and her blue leather shoes remaining from her prior life of 20 months.

Arriving late at our hotel, we ordered nearly one of everything from the room service menu and started giving Alina small tastes of everything which she ate. Eventually Jane and I looked at each other and said, “she’s going to explode if we don’t stop feeding her”!

The next day we ventured out, which meant putting on shoes – Alina loved being out in the city and the following day on a lark I told Alina “go get your mommy’s SHOES”. Jane told me I was crazy thinking she could understand that, but Alina hopped off the bed, went to the closet, grabbed Jane’s shoes and brought them to her. HA – vindicated! Alina turned her Russian vocabulary and two-word sentences to English very quickly!

We tried the hotel restaurant and with a breakfast buffet, brought Alina a wide variety of food. However, this time she ate a few things, then took a look at the spoon we were holding out and pronounced “Nyet”! Oh, no? Here try this, and this, and this… We realized too late that we had introduced Alina to food choices and she chose to exercise this extensively, eventually settling on white foods – rice, bananas (of course), chicken and little else. Even pasta, which Bobby and Jake lived on, was foreign for many months. Consulting on this with our pediatrician assured us that while not recommended, our bodies are remarkably versatile so keep trying veggies and other more balanced diets, but don’t sweat it if her food choices remain “white stuff”.

Along with the adoption process came good counselling, and one terrific piece of advice was to tell Alina her birth and adoption story starting immediately, don’t wait for the “right age” as there is no right age. So, we did and promised her that we would take her back to Latvia when she got of an age to appreciate it.

So we connected with a group that did projects at an orphanage in Riga, not Alina’s orphanage in Daugavpils but the closest we could get. We did projects for a few years with them and during one trip we traveled back to Daugavpils with Alina and our middle son, Jake, who has a knack for languages and studied up on Latvian. We returned to the orphanage 15 years after Alina’s adoption, she was 16 years old by then, and had Jake’s limited translation skills, the Director’s daughter as an English interpreter, and a sheet of images from Alina’s pre-adoption materials that were originally sent to us. Turns out the “interpreter” spoke Russian predominantly but could translate into Latvian. Russian was still largely spoken on the eastern side of Latvia due to the proximity with Russia, so that when speaking to the staff, they spoke Russian that was translated into Latvian and then Jake did his best to understand and translate into English for us. Not an ideal situation, but by pointing at pictures, we explained that Alina was from that orphanage, and the Director recognized a caregiver in one photo. She took us to the “baby room” where she tried explaining to that caregiver the situation. By pointing at the picture and then Alina, we made the connection that she was the baby in the photo, from this same baby room, and that the caregiver we were speaking with was her caregiver! With a baby in her arms already, she grabbed and hugged Alina saying her name over and over – Alinishka! Alinishka! Cleary, we found the right person and what a heartwarming reunion that was.

Alina is now 29, married to Warner with a 16-month-old son who is our second grandson and fifth grandkid.

Jake, 37, still loves languages and cultures and works as a musician, producer, performer, and podcast editor based in Brooklyn, NH with his girlfriend, Natascha.

Our oldest, Bobby, is married to Kristin with four kids, Rose, Lucy, Will and Meg; they live in Chapel Hill, NC where they are nurturing a new church plant, Trinity Baptist.

Jane and I are both winding down our careers. She has worked as a Financial Marketing Analyst for a high-tech California-based company for the last part of her career. After some engineering positions, I moved into Sales & Marketing for Life Science Tools companies. I love the ability to impact company and product directions and introducing new innovative new drug discovery and genomics tools to pharmaceutical and biotech clients globally.

During COVID we bought some land from our nephew in Owls Head, Maine – midway between Boothbay Harbor and Bar Harbor and just south of Rockland, ME. Jane designed a smallish cottage, we hired a builder and just two short years later we had a three-season cottage! We now split our time between our home in Oceanside, CA (San Diego County) and the cottage in Owls Head, typically alternating months between May and October.

We continue to love the water, and we stand-up paddleboard in Oceanside’s harbor, and boogie board and surf in the Pacific, just a short bike ride from our home. At our Owls Head cottage we also paddle, hike and get out on the water on Jane’s Zodiak and my Cape Dory Typhoon daysailer. Should your travels bring you anywhere near either location, let us know! Bruce’s mobile number is 408-813-2344.