The money was good, and few could argue that the job wasn’t exciting, but still Rolf wasn’t content. Having had a taste of life on the ocean, he longed to smell the salt spray once more and ride the pitching deck in a storm where the giant waves tossed ships like toys. Rolf was still very young—only seventeen. With World War I looming in Europe since 1913, going to sea wasn’t the safest option, but Rolf had never put safety first. He took the advice of a Swedish sea captain who told him to register with the Norwegian Consulate in New York and to take that opportunity to add a few years to his age. He did that, and gave his birthdate as July 7, 1897. Overnight he was twenty years old, old enough to go to sea. He went down to the docks of New York City, willing to sail on any ship that had a job he could fill. He was soon hired on as a mess boy for the British merchant ship Ganges. In June 1917, he found the shipping line where he would remain for the next twenty-six years: the Luckenbach Steamship Company.
Rolf’s miraculous luck began to reveal itself a year later as he worked as a quartermaster/helmsman on the Harry Luckenbach. Although his ship was torpedoed by a silent, deadly German submarine, and at least eight of his shipmates perished, Rolf survived and somehow made his way to France.
By the time he was really in his early twenties he was exceptionally strong. Soon, he was working on another ship in the Luckenbach line. He continued his steady progress up the ladder, through all the on-deck ranks and, by 1926, to his first command. Rolf Neslund became master of the Robin Goodfellow.
One of the diciest jobs on ships is that of pilot. It requires great skill and natural instinct to guide mammoth vessels from the oceans through narrow waterways leading to city ports where they are loaded and unloaded. Being a ship’s pilot is one of the most prestigious jobs in the shipping industry. After commanding a number of Luckenbach ships on intercoastal routes for ten years, Rolf became a pilot. He was in particular demand to direct vessels in and out of the intricate harbors of Puget Sound.
In 1935, the Puget Sound Pilots’Association was established, a brotherhood of skilled seamen who shared a special camaraderie. Most of them were, like Rolf Neslund, once captains of their own ships. Rolf was one of their earliest members. The association exists today, licensed by the State of Washington and the U.S. Coast Guard with very strict codes of training, experience, skill, and conduct to protect both citizens and natural resources.
Although he was a good-looking man, a fine example of his Norwegian background, it isn’t surprising that Rolf married later in life than most men. He had dropped into many ports and been consumed with his duties, and that left him far too busy to think of marriage, but not too busy to think of women.
He was thirty-four when he married his first wife, Margot,* in 1934. With that marriage, Rolf Neslund began a most complicated round-robin of romantic entanglements. Margot was also a native of Norway, the country where Rolf felt most at home. In 1935, he met her baby sister, Elinor, who was only eleven years old at the time. He scarcely noticed her, but Elinor found him very handsome, a hero larger than life, and she never forgot him. Rolf, of course, was old enough to be her father.
Elinor didn’t see Rolf again for twenty-one years. When they met once more, it was in Seattle in 1956. She was thirty-two, a single mother of two young girls, and he was nearing his middle fifties.
Rolf had had many adventures during the two decades since he’d last seen Elinor. If possible, he was even more heroic and attractive to her.
But he was married to her sister.
Margot and Rolf had never had children. That wasn’t surprising. Initially, he was scarcely around often enough to impregnate his wife. After three years as an independent pilot, Rolf Neslund had again decided that he missed the open sea. The 1940s was not an era in which most men would have chosen to be at sea. There was, of course, a new world war going on, and submarines prowled, silent as sharks, beneath the ocean’s surface. Rolf wasn’t worried; he had been on a ship sunk by a submarine before and emerged safely.
In 1943 he walked up the gangplank as master of the Walter A. Luckenbach. Later that year, Rolf commanded a huge freighter—the Andrea F. Luckenbach—as it traversed the Atlantic Ocean headed out of New York City and bound for Liverpool, England. Upon its arrival in the city that would one day be most famous as the home of the Beatles, Rolf’s ship was called into service as part of the Merchant Marine fleet. The Andrea Luckenbach was ordered to rendezvous with other vessels during the invasion of North Africa.
But that was not to be. The massive ship never made the invasion. Rolf Neslund would have the dubious record for most times torpedoed. The Andrea F. Luckenbach took a hit from a submarine and sank, taking twenty-one of his men to their deaths far below. Although many people were unaware of it, those serving in the Merchant Marine had a higher mortality rate than those in any of the armed forces, losing one out of every twenty men to enemy attacks. But not Rolf Neslund. Once again, he survived unscathed.
Undeterred, Rolf moved to another Luckenbach ship and commanded it and others anywhere he was needed. On one trip from South Africa to Brazil, he and his men saved the entire crew of a company boat that was sunk seventy miles off the Cape of Good Hope.
By the time the war ended in 1945, Rolf was in his mid-forties, still a long way from retirement. He had finally had enough of life on the ocean, however, and became a Puget Sound pilot again. When he finally retired from the Puget Sound Pilots’ Association thirty-four years later he would do so as the oldest—and, arguably, most beloved— member in their history.
Blond and ruddy, Rolf Neslund was a ladies’ man—at least when he was in port long enough to meet women. He looked a great deal like a movie star of the forties: Paul Henreid, the actor most remembered for lighting two cigarettes at once in a three-handkerchief movie entitled Now Voyager. Henreid’s character handed one smoldering cigarette to sloe-eyed Bette Davis in a movie scene considered one of the most romantic of all time. It was the kind of gesture Rolf was capable of, too.
When Rolf wore his captain’s uniform with four gold stripes on his left sleeve, his cap loaded with more gold braid and insignia, he was handsome enough to rival any screen hero. This was the man who had dazzled eleven-year-old Elinor and who fascinated her again as an attractive grown woman.
Rolf Neslund was a man full of the lust for life, one with scores of friends, and he took the time and trouble to keep his friendships alive. For many years, he sent out 550 Christmas cards, painstakingly addressing them himself. He also made sure that elderly friends and relatives had birthday cards each year. Everyone liked him.
Margot Neslund became chronically ill, and Rolf persuaded Elinor to move in with them in their home north of Seattle. Margot needed someone to care for her, and who better than her own sister? Elinor had grown up to become a willowy blonde, quite pretty in a quiet way.
Rolf was a virile man and the forced celibacy that came about because of his wife’s long illness was proving difficult for him. He was in his fifties when Elinor moved into the Neslund home. Rolf was not blind to Elinor’s attractiveness and he saw that she watched him when she didn’t think he was aware of it.
It was probably inevitable that Rolf and Elinor would become intimate, living so close together, each of them longing for passion and sexual fulfillment. Whether Rolf’s wife was aware in the beginning that her sister and her husband were having an affair is questionable. She probably knew and chose to look away. But Elinor took good care of Margot, and the first Mrs. Neslund may have made up her mind to leave things alone and pretend not to see. At least for a time.
By the time Margot Neslund finally realized the affair wasn’t going to end and filed for divorce, Elinor was pregnant, an obvious condition that made it impossible for Margot to rationalize her suspicions away.
While the Neslund divorce was in the works, Elinor held her head up, ignoring the buzz of local gossips. She and Rolf were married in Finland that year—1958—and she gave birth to a son, and named him after his father: Rolf. Two year
s later, she was pregnant with a second son, Erik. At sixty, Rolf Neslund was the father of two young boys.
Elinor was living temporarily in Norway, and Rolf was often working as a ship’s pilot in one faraway port or another. What Elinor didn’t know—nor, perhaps, did Rolf— was that she and Rolf were not legally married. At the time of their Finnish wedding ceremony, Rolf’s divorce from Margot was not yet final.
Elinor had high hopes for their marriage when Rolf sent for her and little Rolf to come to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was happy that their second baby would be born there with his father close by.
Rolf bought plane tickets to bring the pregnant Elinor and their little boy to Vancouver, the Canadian city about 140 miles north of Seattle. Many people hoping to emigrate to America go first to Canada because it’s easier to cross its borders.
Elinor was shocked, almost speechless, when Rolf admitted to her that he had learned they weren’t really married. But he quickly explained that he was now divorced from her older sister and he wanted to marry her legally. He had even obtained a Canadian marriage license.
It should have been a rather romantic happy ending— except for the fact that Rolf had yet another woman in his life, someone he had met in Seattle while Elinor was in Norway. Her name was Nettie Ruth Myers, and, like Elinor, she was a generation younger than Rolf.
Outside of her immediate family, she seldom answered to “Nettie,” and preferred to be called “Ruth.” Ruth had a very strong personality and a native cunning that made her much more talented in getting what she wanted than Elinor was.
And what Ruth wanted was Rolf.
Despite Rolf’s denials, Elinor suspected that from the beginning. Ruth was omnipresent in their lives, and when Rolf introduced Ruth to Elinor, he explained that she was a close business associate of his. But Elinor wondered what kind of business that could be, since Rolf cared only about his ships and wasn’t in any way a businessman.
Worse, Elinor, heavily pregnant and feeling unattractive and awkward, was suspicious when Rolf said he had hired Ruth to be a kind of “housekeeper” who would help Elinor until after their baby was born. She didn’t want Ruth around and she didn’t need her, but Ruth moved into their Vancouver house and made herself at home.
Elinor was worried—and she had reason to be. She herself had become intimate with Rolf when she was in his first wife’s home, caring for her own sister. If he had cheated with her, how could she be sure he wouldn’t cheat on her with another woman? The whole plan was too much like the one Elinor had lived through in Seattle; the only thing that would change would be that now Elinor would be Rolf’s wife, and Ruth would be the other woman living in their home. Elinor didn’t care for Ruth at all. Ruth wasn’t friendly and she seemed to wield more power over Rolf than Elinor herself ever had. Ruth did very little housekeeping and she certainly didn’t appear to be doing any business with Rolf. After Elinor gave birth to her second son, Erik, Ruth Myers didn’t leave. In fact, Ruth became even more entrenched in their lives. She gave her opinions very freely on what should have been private matters.
“Once,” Elinor later recalled, “Ruth suggested that I return to Norway and have the children adopted out! It was a very miserable situation for me.”
Elinor wouldn’t think of giving up her boys. She loved Rolf and Eric; they were Rolf’s natural sons. And Rolf seemed to care for Elinor and the little boys. Still, however outrageous Ruth’s remarks were, Rolf never asked Ruth to move out.
It was a stressful time—two women, each of whom wanted to marry the man they shared a house with. It was a standoff, but neither woman gave up.
In 1961, Rolf obtained another Canadian wedding license, and told Elinor that he really did want to marry her. It seemed that Elinor had won her man back. But there was much more than a slight hitch in his plan to marry her. To Elinor’s horror, Rolf confessed that he was already married to Ruth Myers, and had been for months.
That didn’t mean, he said with truly flawed reasoning, that he couldn’t marry Elinor, too!
“I was so suspicious of their relationship all along,” Elinor said. “When I found out that they were married, I knew I didn’t want to marry him again.”
Rolf assured Elinor that he’d had no choice but to marry Ruth. It wasn’t that he loved her, but she had threatened to expose him—and told him that Elinor would, too. He wanted to stay in America, his adopted country, but Ruth lied and said that Elinor was threatening to turn him over to immigration authorities for fraud.
“Ruth says you’re going to tell them about how I lied about my age way back when I stowed away on the ships from Norway,” he told Elinor. “She said they’ll deport me for that.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Elinor breathed. “How could you believe I would betray you?”
But Ruth’s psychological manipulation had made Rolf paranoid about what might happen if Elinor ever got angry with him. Ruth had succeeded in convincing Rolf that the only way he could feel secure about staying in America would be for him to marry a native-born U.S. citizen. Ruth was an American citizen, born in the heart of America in Illinois. If Rolf married her, he could not be deported.
And Ruth, of course, was prepared to provide him with that safety net. She herself would marry him.
Ruth convinced Rolf to marry her in a quiet ceremony on April 24, 1961. He was sixty-two and she was forty-one. And, of course, that legal marriage meant that he could not marry Elinor. Ruth made sure of that.
“Why didn’t you ask me about this sooner?” Elinor gasped. “I would never have done that to you.” She assured him that Ruth had been lying to him.
But it was too late. Even though Rolf kept proclaiming his love for the Norwegian beauty who was twenty-five years younger than he was, he continually gave in to what Ruth wanted. It was almost as if Ruth had hypnotized him.
Ultimately, Elinor refused to go through with a second sham marriage, and stepped aside, her dreams in ashes. Rolf and Ruth were already married to one another, and there was nothing Elinor could do about that.
Although Ruth scoffed at the idea for years, there is ample evidence that Elinor still loved Rolf and that he cared deeply for her, continuing to visit her and their sons while she remained in Vancouver. It is likely that their forbidden romance continued for decades, but they could never marry. Their route to the altar had met with one blockade after another, the vast majority of them erected by Nettie Ruth Myers.
Rolf wanted to live in America, but he told Ruth he would never cut his ties to Norway and to his brothers and sister there. And he told Elinor he would never forget her or his two sons.
Two
Rolf and Ruth moved back to Washington State. Now that she was married to him, she didn’t want him to have anything to do with Elinor, Rolf Junior, or Erik. She kept tabs on him to be sure he wasn’t giving Elinor money to live on. He was giving them money, though, and most of the time Ruth didn’t know. When she discovered from time to time that he was helping Elinor out, she was angry. Once she found a greeting card he planned to send to Elinor and it had five hundred in it. Ruth was furious.
How on earth had Rolf Neslund, essentially committed to Elinor Ekenes, become so intimately involved with the woman who was now his wife?
Theirs was a chance meeting, but Ruth had taken it from there. In the late 1950s, Ruth Myers worked for an insurance agency in Seattle. She had planned to have lunch with a man whose offices were in the Smith Tower, but her lunch date was canceled. Fate then placed her on an elevator in the building just as Rolf Neslund stepped in. She often recalled that she was instantly attracted to him. He had a full head of iron-gray hair and a classic jawline, and carried himself like a much younger man. Before Rolf got off that elevator, Ruth first made sure that she knew his name and that he knew hers and how to get in touch with her. And then she asked him out to lunch, boldly showing her interest in him. Flattered, he accepted.
“She saw Rolf,” Deputy Ray Clever of the San Juan County Sheriff’s O
ffice said many years later, “and she decided she wanted to have him.”
Even though Rolf Neslund was a generation older than the forty-one-year-old Ruth, that didn’t daunt her. He was an undeniably handsome man who led an active life. She was even more interested in him when she learned he made good money as a pilot on Puget Sound, and he was not without means. Ruth’s hardscrabble background had taught her to appreciate a man who could provide her with a comfortable life. But at first it wasn’t money or security on Ruth’s mind. She wanted him as a lover.
Ruth could probably have made a fortune teaching a course on how to enchant a man. Nettie Ruth Myers was not a great beauty, but she had a pleasantly curving figure and she was a lot of fun. She had a full face with a sharp chin, a somewhat bulbous nose, and tightly permed hair and she wore glasses with lenses so wide that her eyes sometimes took on an owlish cast. Even though she was no Lana Turner, Ruth had something more important than sheer physical beauty. She knew how to interest a man and how to please him. She had had to perfect that particular talent to lift herself out of the poverty of her youth. Perhaps, most of all, it was her forte as a consummate actress that helped her get what she wanted. Throughout her life, Ruth was able to be whatever she sensed people wanted her to be—seductive, sweet, cozy and comfy, sharp in business deals, stubborn, controlling, or compliant. And she would always have both her detractors and her supporters, some who declared she was the devil and others who swore she was an angel on earth.