Category Archives: Letters

A Letter From Mrs. Rayburn

This week, while watching an episode of the classic American TV sitcom “Leave It To Beaver”, I stumbled upon what one might call an “Easter Egg”.

In the episode “Her Idol”, first aired on November 6, 1958, the principal of Grant Avenue Grammar School, Mrs. Rayburn (played by Doris Packer) sends a typewritten complaint letter to Mr. Ward Cleaver (played by Hugh Beaumont). The letter appears on screen for only a brief moment, and Beaumont reads only the last line aloud. When the episode was aired, television resolution was so low that the audience could not have deciphered the letter. But with today’s high definition scans, it is possible (albeit with some difficulty).

And as it turns out, one of the show’s writers (or maybe the props department) had a bit of fun here. The letter reads:

Mr. Ward Cleaver
485 Mapleton Drive
Mayfield, State

My Dear Mr. Cleaver:

This paragraph has absolutely nothing to do with anything. It is here merely to fill up space. Still, it is words, rather than repeated letters, since the latter might not give the proper appearance, namely, that of an actual note.

For that matter, all of this is nonsense, and the only part of this that is to be read is the last paragraph, which part is the inspired creation of the producers of this very fine series.

Another paragraph of stuff. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. My typing is lousy, but the typewriter isn’t so hot either. After all, why should I take the blame for these mechanical imperfections, with which all of us must contend. Lew Burdette just hit a home run and Milwaukee leads seven to one in the series. This is the last line of the filler material of the note. No, my mistake, that was only the next to last. This is last.

I hope you can find a suitable explanation for Theodore’s unusual conduct.

Yours truly,

Cornelia Rayburn

Two things of note:

“Mayfield” is a fictional American small town, and the show never disclosed the state it was located in. Hence there is no such reference in the letter’s address section.

Lew Burdette (November 22, 1926 – February 6, 2007) was of course a very real person – a very famous Major League Baseball pitcher who played primarily for the Boston / Milwaukee Braves. He was considered the most valuable player of the 1957 World Series, leading the franchise to its first championship in 43 years, and the only title in Milwaukee history. So as it happens, the reference to Burdette and the second game of the World Series allows us to date the letter: it appears to have been typed in the early afternoon of Thursday, October 2, 1958.

On that day, beginning at 1:00 PM Central Time, the Milwaukee Braves played the New York Yankees at County Stadium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was the 2nd game of the World Series. There, during the first inning, with the Braves already leading 4-1, Burdette scored a three-run homer, bringing the tally to 7-1. The Milwaukee Braves ended up winning Game 2, but in a reversal from 1957, the Yankees defeated the Braves in seven games to win their 18th title, and their seventh in 10 years.

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Werher von Braun’s Letter to Jacqueline Kennedy

A little over two months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, rocket scientist Wernher from Braun wrote:

Mrs. Kennedy replied ten days later:

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Ernest Hemingway Letter Reveals Toll Of Injuries

To say that Hemingway was prone to injurious brushes with death would be an understatement. In WW-1, he was nearly killed by a mortar blast in Italy. (He had just returned from the canteen and from bringing chocolate and cigarettes for the men at the front line). His shrapnel injuries sent him to the hospital for six months. Then, during WW-2, a German anti-tank round blew him from the sidecar of a motorbike, hurling his head into a rock. In a 1945 a car accident he “smashed his knee” and sustained another “deep wound on his forehead” (along with a concussion), which was followed by another car crash in 1947. And so it continues.

In January 1954, while in Africa, Hemingway was almost fatally injured in two successive plane crashes. During a flight over the Belgian Congo, the chartered plane struck a utility pole and went down in heavy brush. Hemingway’s injuries included a head wound. His wife Mary, also on board, broke two ribs. A pilot who passed over the wreckage spotted no survivors. A report went out saying the famous American author was dead.

In fact, Hemingway, his wife, and the pilot had escaped from the wreck and were camped in the brush nearby, surrounded by a herd of elephants, and eventually rescued by a tourist boat.

The next day, the couple boarded another plane to get medical care in Entebbe, Uganda. But the aircraft caught fire, crashing during take-off. In the second crash, and while escaping from the wreck, Hemingway suffered burns and yet another concussion, the head injury being serious enough to cause a leakage of cerebral fluid.

Hemingway made light of it when he and his wife finally arrived in Uganda (this time by car), carrying a bunch of bananas and a bottle of gin.

Despite suffering from his severe injuries, Hemingway proceeded to go on a fishing trip with his wife and son. This time he got caught in a brushfire. Again he was injured, sustaining second-degree burns on his lips, legs, front torso, left hand, and right forearm.

Months later in Venice, Italy, Hemingway’s wife recounted the extent of the damage to friends: two cracked discs, a kidney and liver rupture, a dislocated shoulder and a broken skull.

Now, a handwritten letter from Hemingway to his lawyer has re-surfaced, and was sold at Nate D Sanders Auctions in Los Angeles. Dated April 17, 1953 (which is an error – it was 1954), and written on paper from the Gritti Palace Hotel in Venice, Italy, Hemingway’s own writing gives a glimpse of the events as he saw them.

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Memorial Day And Love Lost

by Reinhard Kargl

Peggy S. Harris and 1st Lt. Billie D. Harris were married for just six weeks before Harris deployed in World War II. His wife never saw him again. His plane was shot down and crashed into the woods near a small town in Normandy. It took Peggy 60 years to find his grave.

For many of us, the coronavirus shutdowns mean being separated from loved ones, and most of us are longing for a return to the social activities we once enjoyed.

But our inconveniences and hardships pale by comparison to the ordeals faced by those whose relationships were torn apart by war. Since 1775, the U.S. has lost 1.36 million of its people to warfare. And while the vast majority were young men, most of them left behind family, a lover, a fiancé, or a wife and children.

Here are a few snippets of wartime correspondence bearing testimony of the sacrifices made.

At the age of 23, Frank M. Elliott left Georgetown University to join the U.S. Army in 1943. From England, he writes to his wife: 

May 6, 1944

Dearest Darling,

All day I have been fighting the feeling which has been dominating me of late. I keep continually thinking of home and longing for home in the worst way. All your letters of how beautiful my daughter is becoming by the day. The realization that I am missing all these months and years of her formative growth is actually gnawing at my heart. . . .

I love you, Frank

Pauline “Polly” Elliott, 24, answers from the couple’s home in New Castle, Pennsylvania. They had a little daughter, DeRonda “Dee”.

May 28, 1944

Darling—

Here it is Sunday again — Sunday night. I think this is the most lonely time of the whole week for me. I am so darn lonesome for you, Frank darling. Oh I’m not the only one and I know it — there are millions just like me, wishing with all the strength of their hearts and minds for the return of peace and loved ones. — Dee is sleeping on this Sunday night, and the radio is playing old and beautiful music — and I am thinking of the Sunday nights to come when you will be listening to such music with me. — Took Dad to a ball game today — Dee went along — maybe she’ll learn to like baseball as well as her Daddy does — I’ll bet that she will.

I adore you, Polly

A week later, she writes to him:

June 5, 1944

Darling,

 . . This is a beautiful summer evening, darling. I am sitting at the kitchen table (and not even noticing the noise of the refrigerator) from which place by merely lifting my head and looking out the window I can gaze upon a truly silvery, full moon. It’s beautiful, dear — really beautiful, and it has succeeded in making me very sentimental. I had begun to think that I was becoming immune to the moon’s enchantment — so often I have looked at it without you and to keep myself from going mad told myself “It’s pretty, yes — but, so what?”. . . That’s not the way it really is though, darling — the sight of that shining moon up there — the moon that shines on you, too — fills me with romance — ; and even though it’s just a dream now, it’s a promise of a glorious future with one I love more than life. The darned old moon keeps shining for us, darling — and even as it now increases that inescapable loneliness, it also increases my confidence in the future. I truly love you . . .

Frank M. Elliott was killed the next day, June 6, 1944 (D-Day). 

Here’s a letter written by a girl from Boston:

A letter from Barth, Germany, dated May 10, 1945:

Sweetheart,

At last I can write you and say just what I please.  I don’t know whether this will reach you before I get home, but it’s worth taking the chance.  You cannot realize the joy I have experienced at being liberated, and the prospects of being with you soon.  The Germans pulled out of here on April 30th, and we took over.  The Russians arrived on May 2.  Since then we have been impatiently waiting to get out of here…

…It has been a long time and you have not been out of my thoughts for one minute.  I’ll close now, sweetheart, hoping and praying that we will be together very soon for all time.  I love you with all my heart.

Your loving husband,

Arnold

Lieutenant Arnold L. Gray and Hazel J. Gray were reunited and lived a happy life after the war.

Here’s an excerpt from a letter written by 23-year-old Lt. Richard G. Fowler, a U.S. Army Air Forces navigator from Minnesota, to his wife Cornelia.

May 25, 1944

My darling Cornie —

This is my first letter to you in almost five weeks! And I’m writing it not knowing when I’ll be able to mail it, since believe it or not, I’m behind enemy lines.

Fowler’s B-24 bomber had been shot down over the Balkans. 8 crewmen where killed, but Fowler and another man were able to bail out on parachutes.

When I was certain the chute was open, I looked up and saw the white silk billowing and swaying in the wind. It was very quiet and you have no sensation of falling until you near the ground—just floating in space. My face and right hand had been burned quite badly and hurt like the very devil. A thousand thoughts ran through my head as I was falling. It took about ten minutes before I hit the ground so I did have time to think. First of all I wondered what you would think not hearing from me for a long time—I was quite certain I would be captured by the Germans and taken to a prison camp in Germany.

Lt. Fowler survived the war and was eventually reunited with his wife. Many other families were not so lucky:

This Memorial Day, let’s also consider those whose hopes for love and happiness were crushed and destroyed when war took the love of their life, never to return, leaving behind a void never to be filled.

– 30 –

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Extract From A Letter By Thomas Jefferson To Charles Yancey

Monticello Jan. 6. 16.

“if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be. the functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. there is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”

Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1800

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Sold: Handwritten Note By Albert Einstein

Here’s a note Albert Einstein wrote while staying at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo in 1922. As the story goes, he handed it to a Japanese courier who had come to the hotel to deliver Einstein a message. Selling price at auction in October 2017: $1.56m (€1.33m )

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Fidel Castro’s Letter to Franklin Roosevelt

Fidel Castro died at the age of 90, on November 25, 2016. Years ago, I was assigned to write his biography for a German magazine. In it, I pointed out how Castro’s life convictions and personal values were shaped through youth experiences. But Castro didn’t initially grow up hating the United States or regarding it as an enemy. Quite the contrary, as a boy he was fascinated by America and by its revolutionary heritage.

Here’s a little curiosity from the United States National Archives. In 1940, a then 14-year old Fidel sent this jovial, handwritten, cheeky letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Curiously, the “received stamp” shows the exact day 76 years before Fidel Castro’s death.

Young Fidel did not receive a reply from President Roosevelt himself, but the record shows that an administrative pr0-forma acknowledgement was sent. Thirteen years later, Castro would be spearheading a revolution leading to the overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.

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Dear Linda and Paul

In or around 1971, in the aftermath of the Beatles’ cantankerous breakup, Linda McCartney (Paul’s wife at the time) apparently wrote a scathing letter to John Lennon. His response re-surfaced at an auction in Boston in 2016. (Click to enlarge).

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