Molina was born soon after the happy couple's consequent arrival in America.
A few short years after Molina's birth, Ahmet and Nergis Kundakçı perished tragically in a spectacular sports car crash, on June 19th, 1953, as they were driving to California to look at the Golden Gate Bridge. AP Wire photos of the blazing wreck were published front page, above the fold, in America's large dailies, next to mug shots of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who had been executed the same day.
If anyone had laid the accident photos side by side about two years later, the shattered shell of the Kundakçı's little Porsche Spyder would have looked eerily like James Dean's wreck in 1955. Nobody did, though.
State troopers, finding no apparent cause for the wreck, assumed that Ahmet must have swerved to avoid some small animal that had been unaccountably boogying in the middle of Route 66. They couldn't know that Ahmet had, in fact, been completely paralyzed by the sudden appearance of an immense barn silo thrusting into the sky, as they rounded a curve.
The Rosenbergs, who may have never really spied for anyone -- at least not to the extent that should have warranted untimely death in tastefully matched His 'n Hers electric chairs -- left behind two children. No one wanted to adopt the children, for fear of suffering a fate of impersonal bureaucratic retribution, similar to that of their birth parents. There was a profane taint of fear in the air.
By a strange coincidence, nobody wanted to adopt Molina either. The Balkan branch of the clan, overjoyed to be finally rid of the deep and abiding familial embarrassment that was Ahmet Kundakçı, disavowed Molina, whom they regarded as the bastard progeny of an unholy union.
By a strange coincidence
