I was born in the Bronx to a fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican mother and a sixteen-year-old immigrant father from the Dominican Republic. At the time, my mother lived in foster care before being moved to a group home for teenage moms. They named me Robert Caraballo.

As a toddler, I was adopted by Victor and Dorothy Crapanzano, my mother’s previous foster parents. They changed my name to Robert Crapanzano.

Throughout their forty years as foster parents, Vic and Dot raised over seventy children, including their two biological children, three adopted children, grandchildren, and several dozen foster children, many of whom had disabilities. Although they are frequently called saints, they are much more than that.

When I married for the second time, I took my wife’s name and have since gone by Robert Solano.

I have many names, but you may call me by any name you choose.

As a child and young adult, I was raised in the Catholic tradition. I was baptized and received all my sacraments, including First Communion, Penance or Confession, Confirmation, and Matrimony. I was an altar boy through adolescence and a devout Catholic through early adulthood, while also exploring Zen Buddhism and Kung Fu as a teenager.

I attended Catholic elementary and high school, learning in the traditions of the Dominican Sisterhood of nuns in schools named after Saint Augustine and Saint Albert the Great. For college, I attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, and later Georgia Tech, Embry-Riddle, and then Capitol Technology University, earning my bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, master’s degree in aerospace engineering, master’s certificate in aviation science, and doctorate in technology.

I served in the Army for twenty-one years, deploying multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan as a Blackhawk pilot, and later managing multi-billion dollar defense programs. Leading soldiers was the pride of my military career. Unfortunately, I have seen too many of my friends die in combat and have watched many more take their own lives due to the physical and emotional wounds sustained in combat. Still, I am a proud American.

In my twenties, I got married and then divorced. For a long time after that, I carried a lot of pain and felt unworthy of love.

Finally, I met my true love, Zaira Solano, and we gave birth to three beautiful children. I am a loving husband and father, and I try my best to be a decent human.

For the record, I am Afro-Latino. I have brown skin, curly black hair, and dark brown eyes.

I am the descendant of tribes from the areas we now know as Andalusia, Spain, and Portugal; the African nations of West Africa—Senegambian and Guinean, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Congolese, and others; of Arawak Taínos from the islands of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, as well as their ancestors from the areas we know as Venezuela, South America, and Central America. I have ancestors who were Mayan, Ashkenazi Jewish, and Mesopotamian.

My adopted family is Italian, Irish, Polish, and Ukrainian. My ancestors hail from areas we now know as Sicily and greater Italy, Poland and Ukraine, England, Scotland, Ireland, and others. Some of my family was the first generation of Americans to arrive at Plymouth Rock.

My ancestors walked to America through the Bering Land Bridge. They were wayfarers who set sail across the ocean in canoes. They were Pilgrims who sailed here aboard the Mayflower. They sailed here in both the master’s and the slave quarters of slave ships. They traveled to Ellis Island holding their infant children.

I am the child of countless generations of men and women who hoped and dreamed for something special for their offspring.

I am the Son of Man.