By: Jerrica Williams

You can’t choose your family, but you can choose the connections you build with them during this lifetime. 

Born to two blind parents, Harijs Ekis was separated from his mother and father at a very young age, as both parents entered different facilities for the blind and he was placed into an orphanage nearby.

Originally from Riga, Latvia, a small city and country in Europe, Harijs was eventually reportedly moved to different orphanages in Germany between the ages of 2-3 years old, after Latvia was invaded by Russia during World War II. Unfortunately, this resulted in him losing all contact with his unmarried mother and father who in turn separated. Ekis lived in several different orphanage(s) for a total of 6½ years and was eventually brought to America by the Lutheran Church Association.

His adoptive parents were Lutheran and picked him out from a picture and brought him to their home. They would later go on to adopt him in 1950. It was at this time that Harijs quickly learned English and started 1st grade. He celebrated his first birthday and Christmas while also learning about his history; being told that both of his original parents had passed away during the war.

With no recollection of either of his birth parents or his past life, other than far distant memories of walking in a forest, Harijs arrived in America unaware of what his future would hold. His adoptive mother, originally from Germany, felt a connection to him immediately but did not speak Latvian and they had to learn to communicate with each other.

After slowly adjusting and learning English, Harijs got his new name; Harris, a derivative of Harijs in Latvia, and grew up in New Jersey where his parents had a large garden and beautiful house. Having lived his first 6½ foundational years in an orphanage, he seemed to readily adapt to life in a new country with a new family; however, for him, there were still many unanswered questions that no one could answer such as: “Did my parents really die?”, “Why were they blind and not me?”, “Why did I often feel so different around other children and why did this happen to me?”.

After college, Harris went into the army, serving in Korea on the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), right after the Pueblo was captured. Harris had many experiences in those years. “My parents had a lake house that I visited several months before I was scheduled to deploy to Korea. They apparently invited a girl that I had dated in college without my knowledge”. He was shocked, to say the least. “When she later told me that if I didn’t marry her I would never see her again, I agreed to get married a few months later and soon afterward, left for Korea.”, said Grahn. “After about 4 months in 1968, she stopped writing to me and never wrote me again that entire year”. He recalls how that year he was full of depression, with the constant question of what happened and why? His first marriage was one that reinforced his history of feeling abandoned again with no explanation of why. “I was so depressed the entire year in Korea. But I came home thinking I was still going to try and stay married but could never get her to explain what happened and why she never wrote, and I just couldn’t get over it, I was married and wanted it to last. But she then stated she wanted a divorce, so I was left all alone by myself in a Minneapolis apartment, without a car, any furniture, no job, and no friends; just a bed and the empty apartment.”

Mr. Grahn went on to finally get a job in 1969 that would relocate him from Minneapolis back to New Jersey; Who would ever have expected that? After getting a good job that he loved and excelled in, he eventually and slowly met the love of his life who would eventually bring him out of his depression and give him two beautiful children. “She was persistent and really changed my life around. I couldn’t be happier”, Harris said.

Then in 2004, he received a letter from the American Red Cross that would change his life’s story as he had known it for so many years and started to answer some of the questions he had while growing up. He knew it had to be someone who knew him because the name listed was Harijs Ekis, which he knew had been his prior name.

“I later met with the Red Cross in Morristown, NJ, and was told someone is looking for you, are you agreeable to meet?” He agreed to allow this person to find and communicate with him. “I thought, we wouldn’t understand each other because I only spoke English, which they wouldn’t understand. A few months later I got a telephone call from a lady on an early Sunday morning saying, in English, that she was my sister’s cousin who taught English in Latvia following the expulsion of Russia from Latvia and would translate for my sister who had been looking for me.” 

Harris’s sister later wrote him a letter, translated by the family member, explaining much of their family history under communism. It was then that he learned that his mother had not died when he was a child but passed away in 2000 from diabetes, his father and mother separated when he was in the orphanage, and his mother re-married and that he had a sister who made it her quest to try and find him for her mother who had no idea where he was or what happened to him. He also learned that he had a living aunt that was also blind and used to visit him at the orphanage as a  baby. Harris’s biological sister explained that she had searched for him for nearly 60 years, but because Latvia was considered a closed state; government rules and the lack of documentation hindered her to be successful in her search. She shared with Harris the story of a time when she reached out to a radio station for help, and it was passed on to the Russian police. This prompted them to arrive at their family’s home to ask questions about whom they were looking for and why. She was not home, and her father knew nothing about her search, so luckily they left. This further complicated her search, but she continued over the years.

The Grahn family was invited to visit Harris’s biological family in Latvia, but he had initial hesitation and felt uneasy about leaving this new country and the family he loved. It wasn’t until after his wife passed that he decided it was time to visit his roots and let his family see where he came from. Harris, his son, and daughter, along with her husband and two children, visited Latvia in 2018 and were able to finally meet his biological sister and her family: his aunt (the sister of his mother), and several other family members in an emotional reunion.

Mr. Grahn’s daughter, Alicia Jones, sits on the board for the Greater Atlanta chapter of the American Red Cross of Georgia. She credits the reunification of her father and his family in Latvia as the reason why she chose to become a Red Cross board member although she had several other options. She says, “I had to evaluate what service opportunity was most meaningful for me. This story was my connection. This all just makes sense.”

Mr. Grahn, Alicia, and Alicia’s brother plan to visit Latvia once again this summer. “We want to really bond with them; even more, this time”, said Grahn.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent network is the largest humanitarian organization in the world with a presence in almost every country. Red Cross and Red Crescent teams help reconnect families separated by international crises. For more information, please click here.