The Lost and Found Art of Letter Writing

During the past 40 years I grudgingly transitioned from pen and paper to keyboarding communications. While each has its place I believe that even though I can reach hundreds, even millions through a host of electronic means, nothing can be more intimate or place taking than a simply composed hand written letter.

During the sixties I experienced the pleasure and chore of letter writing campaigns in grade school taken on by some good intentioned teacher to reach government officials or pen pals around the world. They wanted us to learn that there is more out there than our little community and teach us composition and penmanship as we toiled in class to complete assignments. Stamps were 5 cents, postcards 4 cents.

By the time I reached my sophomore year in high school my dad was stationed in Zweibruecken, Germany. We would soon follow once he obtained housing for the family but the only means of communications even as recently as the 70’s was still by US Mail. All of us kids would write to dad asking what to expect, how he was doing and relay recent activities we experienced. He was clearly outnumbered but found the time to respond to each one of our letters in kind. I cannot express the anticipation we felt waiting each day for our personal letter to arrive. During our three years in Germany we stayed in contact with friends and family through this option but upon return to the States my personal interest in letter writing began to wane. That is until my daughter joined the Coast Guard this past year.

It was a courageous decision for her to uproot herself but I am proud she continues the family tradition of serving her country. The hard part was her 8 weeks in boot camp in Cape May, NJ. During that ordeal there were no cell phones, computers or land line phone calls allowed. The only form of communication was again, the US Mail. Letter writing was a daily occurrence for both of us, so much so that letters would over lap. So prodigious was her letter writing and responses from her friends and family that she was receiving correspondence daily, sometimes two and three letters a day. Her mom was fond of applying silly stickers to the outside envelope that the entire squad knew who the letter was from at mail call. Some others in the squad had no one writing to them. They would gather around Allison and ask her to read out loud or to pass around the pictures she received or share her postcards.

Allison is currently stationed on the Gulf Coast in Texas and requests we continue to write each other. Even though we can call, text, e-mail or update Face Book pages in an instant, we enjoy the anticipation of a letter waiting in the mail box after a day at work as I did almost forty years ago.