natives of Latvia whose families had migrated to New Haven in the 1880s. "My mother and father had been brought to this country from Russia when they were infants", wrote Capp in 1978. "Their fathers had found that the great promise of America was true -- it was no crime to be a Jew." The Caplins were indigent; Capp recalled stories of his mother going out in the night to sift through ash barrels for reusable bits of coal.

In August