There was no part of me intentionally "channeling" Puglia Italy. I didn't give myself the nickname "Noah Balboa" or know that Stallone's father was born in Puglia, I didn't know the woman of Italian descent that I dated, and got close enough to to meet her parents, was the grandchild of emigrants from Puglia, I didn't know when it occurred to me to take the last name Sicuro, that that surname originated in Puglia either. I learned all these things after looking into it once I learned my grandfather emigrated from Italy, and his grandfather was born to emigrants from Greece, who had originated as Latins themselves, still calling themselves the Latin derived name for "Roman" in their language. I didn't know "I" came from Latinized Greco-Illyrians, yet was gravitating closer and closer to the phenomenon unaware. One thing I remember seeing probably in 2009 after I got a facebook account was a few social media posts that compared Paul McCartney's likeness with Sylvester Stallone's... 

Since I knew my father at the time as someone of Scots-Irish descent, the fact Paul McCartney, famously Irish himself, could be compared to the likeness of Stallone, meant the cultural difference or genetic difference etc, had little meaning in the grand scheme of things. But the link was made in my mind, and I knew I preferred Italian cultural elements to Irish ones by a long shot.

Which side of the Adriatic the Latinized Greco-Illyrians that my biological paternal family came from matters little to me. The fact that's been there all along, and there's continuity between my father, and my father's father despite the fact they never met, means a lot to me. We'll never know what came from inherent behaviors and recognition of the self, and what was passed verbally from Sorin to Audrey to Kyle. But most of my siblings agree, the anecdotes we have, and the history we now know that we didn't previously, are not coincidence. 

It's funny to me that a family of people that traced to Romanized Greco-Illyrians would have representatives drawn to the closest known example of the people they came from. Vlachs, Aromanians, Latin-Greeks, are not well known. Italians, and especially those from southern Italy, at least in America, are. That's because the vast majority of immigration from Italy to the states was from southern Italy, as it was a poorer region. There's actually a lot of similarity between the Mezzogiorno as it is known and the farther side of the Adriatic. Even after the start of the Ottoman era, there was a significant amount of emigration from Greece and Albania to southern Italy, namely to escape Islam and the threats the Ottomans inflicted on the populace in the region. Frank Zappa for one appears to trace to this phenomenon, his surname apparent to have originated with Greco-Illyrians in the form of Albanian Aromanians, as example Evangelos Zappas/Vangjel Zhapa, Konstantinos Zappas and Petros Zappas of what is now Gjirokaster, Albania, all of Latin-Greek origin. Southern Italians, especially from a place such as Puglia, are about the closest more or less widespread example of any people that would be known enough to the average American that someone could come across them by happenstance and recognize the similarity, probably even from a behavioral standpoint.

The corollary is obvious in Italy as well due to the earlier numerous Greek colonies of the Italian Peninsula, especially prior to the Roman Empire, which survive as a linguistic phenomenon as Griko/Greko, namely in Salento (in Puglia) and Calabria, the heel and toe respectively of the Italian Peninsula. The Griko people of southern Italy were only officially recognized by the Italian state as an ethnic and linguistic minority in 1999. The only country to grant the Aromanians official minority status and political representation is North Macedonia. One day, perhaps the Aromanians, the Vlachs, Latin-Greeks as they are alluded as in official Greek political discourse, will achieve recognized political minority status in Greece as the Griko, the “Italiote Greeks” are in Italy.

As Frank Zappa would say, "You are what you is". 

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My father might have liked to think of himself as Greek, enough to name his firstborn son after the most famous character from Thessaly (the region his biological family had emigrated from, although he didn't know it then), Jason, referred to in the Argonautica and related stories as "Jason, the hero of Thessaly". 

On the other hand, I would venture to say in a lot of ways, his biological family was closer to an Italian or certainly Latin cultural framework. Their native tongue was Latin. When nationalism reached the Aromanians, and it became apparent they were not going to get their homeland recognized as a nation, and instead would have to head for Romania or stick around and hellenize, my father's biological family decided against the latter, instead deciding to continue to speak what was probably the closest thing to their native tongue, rather than fully embrace a Greek identity. In part due to British and Germanic meddling which desperately tried to overwrite the Hellenic Roman Empire (the continuation of the Roman Empire from the former Byzantium, pejoratively called the "Byzantine Empire" by Hieronymus Wolf starting in 1557), this was a common phenomenon. The Western/Germanic cultural sphere did not want to recognize and instead tried to distance Roman cultural trappings from the "Greeks" as they called the inhabitants of the region. Even those who spoke Greek were calling themselves "Rhomaioi", the Greek word for "Roman" as recently as 1880, universally. So it was not just the Aromanians calling themselves Romans, the Greek speakers didn't even call themselves "Greeks", they too called themselves Romans. "Greek" as a term for Romans, is similar to calling Deutsch the term "Germans". They never referred to themselves using that word, not until western nationalism reached their shores. In antiquity they called themselves Hellenes, and after they became citizens of the Roman empire, they called themselves Romans, like any normal citizen of said empire.

Basically, I'll never know what was passed down genetically, and what grew out of being passed down from a cultural standpoint intentionally by verbal transmission from my father's mother. And the difference is minimal enough to be trivial at this point.

And the big question mark is Sorin himself. Who knows if he ever even knew he fathered Audrey's son? He left Minneapolis for good about the same time that Audrey and Edgar married. He has record of applying for U.S. citizenship, having enlisted with the Air Force as a doctor and stationed outside San Francisco CA as early as March 3rd, 1955. Audrey and Edgar married only two months before. Doubtful he knew about Kyle, and child support wouldn't be federally mandated for another two decades anyway. R.I.P. it up, Sorin.

Not sure where he got the capacity for this behavior from... Fathering 7 children with 4 different women, 3 of whom he was married to. That's the offspring we know of. His father, a Navy colonel, died married to the same woman, the only one he married, that he had been with for over half a century. It seems the World Wars and the advent of things such as nuclear weapons, what people witnessed and the increase in anxiety, along with the newfound ability and ease with which travel could be accomplished, did a number on the psyche of people collectively the world over. We can only move forward. It's not like there's anything wrong with having originated with Aromanians...

Probably the most well known person of Aromanian descent, or who would be if they had been more vocal about it instead of embracing a vaguely "Greek" identity, is Michael Dukakis, the former longtime governor of Massachusetts and Democratic party nominee for President in 1988. He lost the popular vote by about 7 million count to George H.W. Bush, otherwise he would likely have been U.S. President when the Soviet Union collapsed. Michael Dukakis’ mother was born to Aromanian parents from Vrysochori, 23 miles north and east of Ioannina, Greece.

Michael Dukakis has been married to the same woman for over 60 years.

Some of the earliest accounts of the so called Vlachs of Thessaly from outsiders, in this case from "western" and/or "Germanic" Europe, are quite complimentary.

Gustav Weigand was a German linguist and historian who had this to say about the Aromanians, namely the community at Livadi, just north of Larissa, after spending substantial time getting to know them in the 1880s writing Die Sprache der Olympo-Walache ("The Language of the Olympian Vlach" [Livadi, Krania, etc are basically in the shadow of Mt. Olympus in Thessaly]):

In equivalent English:

“The character of the Thessalian Vlach is reserved, suspicious but entirely honest. Of

particular admiration is his thrift, which borders on stinginess. He holds hospitality to be

sacred, like any self-respecting citizen of the Ottoman Empire. In terms of cleanliness,

moderation, and strict morals, he surpasses the ethnic Greeks.”

William Martin Leake, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 19th century, writing as early as 1794, had this and similar things to say, which he would write over and over in his journal that he published as Travels in Northern Greece:

Unfortunately the outcome of the Greek revolution and the protracted timespan and sheer amount of bloodshed it took to win what meager portion of land the Greeks could get back from the Ottoman empire, and the nationalist feuds that ensued in the greater area, ensured the Aromanians and their history and culture would be overwritten. And then the readily available narrative about them ends up being written by their neighbors, since they were leaving their identity behind anyway.

On the other hand, a person of Italian descent has never even come close to sniffing the presidency, and a person of Latin-Greek descent, whose mother was fully Aromanian, was runner up in a presidential election. No doubt this is because the supposed potential for connection to some vague notion of "mafia" is one of the first things the average American thinks of when Italians are mentioned. Greeks on the other hand are thought of as intelligent, and civil, and remembered for having kickstarted "Western" or European civilization. It can be understood why the Aromanians would have few objections to being hellenized in the grand scheme of things. 

It's interesting to try and understand these people though. Looking in the eyes of Stergios Dardakoulis, a Latin-Greek from Perivola, Grevena, West Macedonia, (and about the only commercially released Aromanian folk singer I know of) I can see some part of where my father got his uniquely washed out blue eyes from, which Sorin had to some degree as well...

Comparing his face shape with my great grandfather Theodorache, who we would expect to be about genetically half Aromanian, and the resemblance can be seen there as well:

I'm not exactly proud of my family history, or the people I came from, but I'm (getting to the point of being) fine with it. Thede Kahl, a German linguist and historian and the foremost expert on the Aromanians since T.J. Winnifrith's passing in November 2020, is married to an Aromanian woman, hence his interest. I don't think these things have to be at odds. There's far more in common than not.

Considering Michael Dukakis' situation, the decision to stick around in northwestern Greece and adopt a vaguely "Greek" identity came with some benefits that would have been next to impossible to foresee 160 years ago. Greece was an incredibly volatile place between the years 1770 and 1914 especially. There is not a doubt in my mind that was a significant part of the reason why the paternal branch of my family left. Romania was a significantly more peaceful, under the radar place at the time. It was also closer to better economic opportunity, nearer to the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, another reason for merchants (the earliest recorded occupation for my paternal biological family at the time) to head that direction. Nobody could have known how volatile Romania would become, or that it would later end up behind the Iron Curtain. You can't change the decisions of the people you came from after the fact. You can't change who you come from either.