Dale’s Introduction to the Letters
Posted Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 at 10:50 amOver however many months it takes, I’m going to share with you my Father’s love letters to my Mom that he wrote to her during his naval tours of duty in World War II. They have been lovingly sorted and bundled together by my Mother after her last reading of them, and I am a fortunate son indeed for getting the chance to know my Old Man as a living, loving young man of 25, almost 30 years younger than I am now. As you can see, this journey might take a while!
A year or so before her death, I had given Mom her Sunday call, and she didn’t sound quite right, reserved, non-talkative, on the emotional edge. Asking her what was wrong she shared with me that she was in the process of reading in order, all of Dad’s letters to her that he wrote while away in college and during the war and had only gotten through to the middle of 1944. She was going to read them and then throw them away. I asked her to save them for me, and when my sister and I were sorting through her things a few months after her death, we were delighted to find that she had indeed saved them like I asked.
I’ve read a few at random, jumping around through the years, and found out that my Dad had quite a wit, and he was also quite a romantic and a lusty fellow to boot. I never really knew that before, so this will be quite an adventure for me. Starting at the beginning, I see that letter writing for him was a lot like this blogging is for me. Kinda rough going at first, with more and more openness and feeling expressed as time goes on. I will do the college letters later in the series, ’cause I want to get right into the war years. The first is his last letter as a civilian, and the next is his first letter as a Navy man.
I’m not going to correct any of the spellings, grammar or punctuation, as these are what is on the pages. He was a college educated man, a pharmacist, so I know that he knew better, but obviously didn’t type very well back then, and when writing by hand, was really in a hurry. Hey — There was a war on!
I hope that you will enjoy these and will let anyone that is interested in WWII, or who might have lived through it, know about this series. To read them in order, use the navigation on the right sidebar — as blog post show up in last posted being at the top.
God bless the souls of my Mom and Dad. They did love each other so very much!
[tags]World War II letters, WWII, Dad’s WWII Letters[/tags]
March 17th, 2006 at 11:05 am
I am a student here in US. I am senior. In our english project, the teacher assigned the topic “letters from home to servicemen during WWII (vice versa)” to me. I did some research and I found your website…I enjoyed it and truly liked it. It will be a very good help for my project too. I wish you can send me one of the letters so I can present it to school. Thanx…
PS. I am an exchange student from Philippines, sorry if some of my grammars are wrong. God Bless.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:48 am
I like the letters…
June 11th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
I too have my dad’s love letters to my mom. I am in the process of putting them in order. I want to put together a book for all the family members so they can have a great memories of their love.
September 29th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Oh! Wonderful!! you *have* to copy these to the site http://www.storyofmylife.com (they just finished up a series of WWI letters -amazing).
Talk to the folks there. The’re super nice. They’ll even copy them over after they’re posted here (and you can have a lag time so the initial post is here). You must think about the future of this. What happens to WordPress or when the blog goes inactive in the future? You simply MUST preserve them forever. This is very important.
I love what you’re doing. Also think about the future. Our kids today are the 1st generation that will grow up entirely with the internet. They will research us for our future ancestors.
I hope you will reach out to them. They will take very good care of you.
ML
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:30 am
My WWII letter collection is a little different… it is my grandmother’s collection of letters from my dad, her son, when he first went off to flight school and later from Stalagluft III. Along with those are letters from other WWII mothers – many of them desperately seeking news of their sons at a time when communication sometimes took months.
I never thought of posting them online, but I have organized them in three leather-bound albums to pass on within our family. I hope to follow your posts, and perhaps someday follow your lead.
June 17th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
I was just given love letters from WWII that my Mother wrote to my Father before and after their marriage. On his last days, he asked that I archive them. Mom was a war bride from Australia and Dad in the Pacific theater. He saved these letters through the war. Unfortunately when my mother came to America, she could only carry one suitcase and her letters are not here. They are real life historical documents.
July 22nd, 2010 at 6:30 am
Thank you for your generous contribution. I can not wait to dig into this website. dawnee
March 9th, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Your site is amazing!!! I was JUST given a box of letters home written by my father when he was stationed in the Pacific. My dad died when I was 17, so I am thrilled to have these treasures. In researching the best way to scan them to save them, I found your site. It’s AMAZING! Do you have advice on format (jpeg?) or resolution to use (50-12800?)? I have an Epson RX600 scanner, and the choices of settings are overwhelming. I particularly like how you’ve scanned them in and also transcribed them. Can you give me a mini-tutorial? Bonnie tangle222@aol.com
July 1st, 2011 at 10:04 am
Thanks for posting your Dad’s letters. I just found letters written to my father while he served in the Navy in WWII. They were from an old girl friend (she sent him a “Dear John” letter), my grandmother and eventually his new girlfriend, my mother. I am now trying to figure out what to do with them.
December 8th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
You’ve done a marvelous job on your website. I, too, have my Dad’s letters — he wrote everyday, sometimes twice and three times — during his service in the Army during World War II. There are about 200 in all! And it’s taken eight months now to read, organize, transcribe, and begin editing his memoirs. It’s a labor of love, and I appreciate what you say about the connection it gives you to your Dad before you were born. My Dad – he passed away in 2006 – never shared any of this with my sister and I. The letters were stowed away for 50 years by my Mom. I don’t think she even looked at them. He was an older and maturer soldier at age 28, and was a keen observer of the scenes around him. The value, besides this amazing connection I am having with my Dad, is expression in lyrical passages his deep love for my Mom, with whom he was married already for three years, as well as his astute commentary on Army life in great detail.
Besides sharing my writing project with my family, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with it as far as sharing it with others. I think there is interest in it. I may start with a website once I’ve completed his memoirs. At any rate, I’d be most grateful if you had any advice about starting one.
David Reich
Berkley, Michigan
December 21st, 2011 at 7:00 am
Thank you for the beautiful way you have chosen to display & share your Dad’s letters to your Mom. I too have some letters not all. Mom seemed to keep those with importance like Archbishop Spellman speaking through World Wide Hook up at Ripal Stadium in the Phillipines on September 2, 1945. I love the historical data in the letters & have learned a lot more than I knew. I was born in March 1945. It took weeks before my Dad knew because he was on a boat to the Phillipines. It took 42 days to go from France to the Phillipines by way of the Atlantic Ocean & through the Panama Canal. What a long way around~ I would like to put them on a website like you did but not sure how. Do you have any tips or an instruction manual OR maybe you would like to continue on your site adding others after yours as in Family Groups of Letters.
Let me know I would be so interested & the cost for doing so. My Dad was Army & I have many pictures that I would share also along with patches, dog tags etc. I was thinking of giing them to a museum but my kids & grands sai no that they wanted them in the family. I will now send scanned letters to family & museums.
Thanks for your beautiful Memorial to your Mom & Dad. You outdid yourself. Deepest Regards.
Janice Brown
Janicebrown247@verizon.net
June 25th, 2012 at 7:45 am
Since I last wrote to you, I now have 535 letters, V-Mails & Telegrams written by my Father that were boxed by my Mother and put in the attic of the house I grew up in, unbeknown to my siblings & I. That house was sold in 1999 & the people are restoring it & they found a box in the attic with all these tightly packed letters. They have yellowed over time but still in great shape. I have typed each one of them & that is how I read them. They were almost on order as she received them which I found amazing but helpful for me. They were an interesting view of how life was back then. Shortage of gas, food, tires with tubes, etc. & using Ration Books which she saved also. I am now scanning them & hope to put them on Internet.