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Post by graywolf on May 13, 2019 11:08:31 GMT -8
Three weeks ago we had to put my Mom in an assisted living facility for dementia patients. My Dad passed away three years ago from cancer and my brothers and I were no longer able to give her the care she needed. This past weekend my sister, brother in law, niece and nephew came to visit from Iowa for Mothers Day. My sister and her husband stayed in my Moms room in my brothers apartment. Buried in her closet was a big box and when we looked inside there were hundreds of letters dating from 1948 - 1952. In 1948 my Mom was 17 and my Dad was 19 and in the Navy. They were love letters. My Mom kept them all these years and never told us kids about them. Reading some of them opened up a whole new world for me. My parents were no longer in their 80's. They were teenagers in love. It brought into focus two people I never knew. They are precious. Nobody writes letters anymore.
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Post by paula53 on May 13, 2019 11:25:43 GMT -8
What a touching find. Those letters will bring your parent's romance back to life, in a touching, very personal, and comforting way. Branching the time and space from the late 40's and now. What a treasure.
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zeke
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Post by zeke on May 13, 2019 11:54:15 GMT -8
What a find! I'm sure it means a lot to each of you. To have that sort of insight into your parents early life will bring you great joy, and possibly a few chuckles.
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Deborah
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Post by Deborah on May 13, 2019 11:56:18 GMT -8
Very nice. You are correct, people no longer write letters. Sad in a way. Perhaps you should make arrangements for them to go to a museum eventually.
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Post by graywolf on May 13, 2019 12:02:54 GMT -8
and possibly a few chuckles. Yes, in a letter from 1951 when my Dad was away in the Navy he wrote to my Mom, "so Tommy peed on you huh." I laughed and laughed.
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Post by Campfires&Concierges on May 13, 2019 13:47:11 GMT -8
Wonderful. was just talking with high school friends about the notes we all passed back and forth - I saved them all until a year ago and then mailed them to one of the other girls. I couldn't bear to throw them out but got tired of moving them every year.
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gabby
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Post by gabby on May 13, 2019 15:05:26 GMT -8
Oh, my. This trove of letters sounds like the perfect beginning for a deeply romantic novel. Stuff that, I presume, would have little value to a "museum" - perhaps.
Once, when I was given access to my mom's and dad's old "black & white" Kodaks (there was at least a half dozen boxes of them), I thought something like the same thing. I was "between semesters" in college, so I ordered all of them by the old Kodak dates and some personal notations on their backs. Some dated back to the 19-teens. There were grandpas and grandmas, not looking anything like how I eventually came to see and know them. There was one picture of my mom sitting on a chair in a back yard somewhere with all her dolls lined up next to her. Her legs didn't even reach the edge of the chair's seat.
The collection was, however, returned to my parents, and eventually to my siblings before I could assemble them into anything reasonable. They, in turn, passed them piecemeal to their children, and so on. They're all gone now.
I have less than a hundred of them left which I scavenged from those boxes later on (after they were returned, but before they were handed out, willy-nilly) with Mom's permission, and a couple of albums Mom gave me back in the 80s, most of which are baby pictures of me from the 40s. I do have my dad's diary from his service aboard a Navy battleship in World War I, filled with a journal interspersed with pictures of flappers in various states of dress/undress, and risque captions to go with them.
Some things really need preservation, but how do we do this now? Some children don't see the value in such things until they're gone forever.
I believe that one of the most interesting things we can do is to see our parents as young and, especially, in love with each other and their lives. Too many forget those feelings far too soon.
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RumiDude
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Post by RumiDude on May 13, 2019 15:53:02 GMT -8
That's great!
My mother kept absolutely everything like this. When my father had to be moved out of the house into assisted living, I had to clean the house out. I went through tons of stuff like this. My mother not only had my father's letters, but letters from others in the family. It was crazy sitting on the floor reading all those letters. I kept a few but decided to trash the rest.
Rumi
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Post by absarokanaut on May 13, 2019 16:10:10 GMT -8
That's awesome man!
One of our brothers gave his siblings an incredible present about 15 years ago. He had all of Dad's WWII letters from Europe beautifully copied and then bound in 3 separate enormous volumes for each of us!
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RumiDude
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Post by RumiDude on May 13, 2019 20:46:26 GMT -8
He had all of Dad's WWII letters from Europe beautifully copied and then bound in 3 separate enormous volumes for each of us! I have all my cousin's letters to my mother from when he was in Vietnam. He was there in 66-67. Reading them was so sad that I cried.50 years later. His life was shattered by the deaths of his friends. He was a Navy Corpsman detached to the Third Marines. On one tragic operation he lost four of his buddies. I was able to look them up on the Vietnam War Memorial page. I still have those letters. Not sure what I should do with them. Rumi
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rebeccad
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Post by rebeccad on May 16, 2019 7:11:55 GMT -8
Letters like that are a treasure trove! On a similar note, last fall my husband discovered (or re-discovered) a memoir written by his grandmother in the 1960s, of her 1900 childhood in Maine. Since we were in Maine ourselves, he was extra interested, and it proved a treasure trove for him and for the community she lived in (we ended up at her childhood church, with him reading out the section on Christmas in the church ca. 1905). She certainly never thought about it being spread so far, but it captured a time and place beautifully (she was a good writer, with either a good memory or a good imagination).
My parents, I think, never wrote to each other, as they were seldom separated. Any letters Dad sent home to his parents from the Merchant Marine/Army (probably not many; he was never a great communicator) are, alas, long gone.
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VAN
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Post by VAN on May 17, 2019 8:11:12 GMT -8
My spouse and I have a binder full of letters back and forth from when he was in Navy boot camp. I also sent clippings from the paper: sports scores, cross word puzzles, comics, etc. It is tucked away up in the attic for now as it was only 15 years ago. Someday I hope my kids and grand kids will enjoy reading them. Sounds like it was very meaningful for you and your family!
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rangewalker
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Post by rangewalker on May 17, 2019 9:07:18 GMT -8
It is a lot of work, but everyone here who has treasures like that, should make some effort to scan and digitize at least some of the most significant of them. And distribute.
I did it for my Ex many years ago, we were early digital adapters, with an SoA scanner, of her trove of family pictures. I saved them for her and her children on CDs and later better quality DVDs.
True to form she managed to loose the CDs and never backed up anything. From conversations with our daughter, I also do no think she is doing anything to properly take of the originals. I just burned a new set for our daughter, living step-daughter and her children. I cannot get too upset with her though, like many I have only just recently paid any attention to my own legacy stuff. I just joked with my LEO daughter about she just needed to check with NCIS or file a FOIA with the FBI to get Dad's early years [Grins]
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snappypepper
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Post by snappypepper on May 17, 2019 11:51:28 GMT -8
My husband deployed for 6 months last year and wrote me a love letter for every day he was gone. We also keep a notebook where we write notes back and forth to each other. I wish more people understood what it is like to look back and read them, it's like going back in time!
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Post by autumnmist on May 17, 2019 13:58:02 GMT -8
My brother found some letters between my parents when my father was stationed in Texas, and just after I was born. It was sooooo emotional to read what she wrote, how happy she was being a mother. I could only read one letter but I'm definitely saving all the rest and someday will read them.
Being a saver, I also have their letters when they were Winter Texans, as well as the cards we sent each other as family members. I've tried to part with the cards, but they're still emotional.
I wonder if today's folks will save their texts and find the same emotion in them years from now.
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