Ask Amy: Readers respond to saving old letters
– Preferring Privacy
Dear Amy: My parents are long since gone, and two of my dearest possessions are treasures that my mom saved.
One is a poem she wrote while dad was overseas during WWII. It wasn't racy, but it did mention "sex," which is probably the only time my sweet mom (mother of six) uttered the word.
The other is my dad's pocket diary. It had a picture of my mom and the kids — a few names of his comrades — and a note saying he had his orders for home, thanking a God he had almost stopped believing in!
My other prized possession is a book compiled by a second cousin containing hundreds of letters written by my great-great-grandfather to his beloved wife as he struggled with life as a stretcher bearer and medic with the Ohio 34th Regiment during the Civil War!
He wrote her almost daily with things sometimes trivial, often dire, complete with accountings of where they were at the time and who his commanding officers were. Some letters dutifully paid homage to those lives lost that day.
Nearly ALL of them signed with the same closing, which appropriately became the book’s title: “In Love and Fidelity.”
— George Sprecher.
Dear Amy: My mother wrote to my father every day, except one — the day my sister was born — while he served in the Pacific during World War II.
He burned them all, along with every one of the many he wrote — after she died when I was 16. It still hurts.
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