Archive for the 'Introduction' Category

Dale’s Introduction to the Letters

Tuesday, February 21st, 2006

Over 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!

The box of Dad's letters to Mom

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!

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