Sepia Lost Uncle #1

In keeping with the Sepia Saturday weekly theme, I present my late Uncle Paul Singer, when he was in the service in the Forties, featuring his "saucer cap."

What's that, you might ask?
From Wikipedia: "A peaked cap, forage cap, barracks cover, or combination cap is a form of headgear worn by the armed forces of many nations and also by many uniformed civilian organizations such as law enforcement agencies. In the United States military, they are commonly known as service caps, wheel caps, saucer caps, or combination covers in the Naval services."

Looking very serious indeed beside the staff cars

Paul was my mother's younger brother.
A relaxed and friendly soul, not to say devil-may-care, he took after his dad Arthur Singer.
Unlike Art, he never seemed to find his calling....

Looking like he has somewhere better to go

Paul was stationed, I believe, at Fort Bragg, California. He was a DJ at the Army base radio station...  

Somewhere I have a 78 RPM record he cut at the studio as a letter home.

Temporarily happy

Soon after his first marriage, his wife left him.  She took their 2-year-old daughter, who, when she was old enough to want to get in touch, was forbidden to contact the Singer family.

Paul with a decorated buddy who looks about 14!

The years passed.
He did this and that through the Fifties and Sixties...
In the early Seventies he tried to start a lobster ranch in Puerto Rico but the government funding failed to come through and he came back to the States disillusioned.
At one point he was selling meat, or possibly fish, from the back of a truck around Los Angeles.

Is that a flight suit? Looks too warm for California!

And then shortly after the last time I saw him in 1979 he left his second wife.
In fact, he left town, without telling anyone where he was going.
We never saw him again.

Pondering his future

Only in the last few years was I able to trace Paul, to find he'd died in 2000, back in L.A., age 76.

I was also able to locate his daughter, now in her 60s, and provide her at last with photos of her long lost father and his parents.

Uncle Paul's daughter and our grandparents, around 1950