Category Archives: Letters

Letter From Governor Ronald Reagan to Charles M. Schulz, Dated July 30, 1970

The strip Reagan was commenting on. (It was published on July 20, 1970).

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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).

john-lennon-letter

john-lennon-letter-2

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“My name is Ernest Miller Hemingway …”

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“My name is Ernest Miller Hemingway.

I was born on July 21, 1899  My favorite authors are. Kipling, O. Henry and Steuart Edward Whit.

My favorite flower is Lady Slipper and Tiger Lily. My favorite sports are trout fishing, Hiking, shooting football and boxing.

My favorite studys are English. Zoology and Chemistry. I intend to Travel and write.”

(Ernest Hemingway, Age 9)

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Dear People of China (An Open Letter)

You are one of the oldest civilizations on Earth.

I am filled with deep respect for your many achievements over the course of thousands of years. Your accomplishments in science, language, mythology, philosophy, spirituality, architecture, literature, music, cuisine and so many other cultural and intellectual pursuits are astounding. You have given the world many of the greatest minds.

But out of ten ethnically Chinese Nobel Prize winners so far, only one — journalist and writer Liu Xiaobo — has done his work in his own homeland, where his intellect is wasted in prison.

No less than six (Chen Ning Yang, Tsung-Dao Lee, Samual Chao Chung Ting, Steven Chu, Daniel Chee Tsui, Roger Yonchien Tsien) have left China to do their work in the United States of America.

One (Charles Kuen Kao) has done his research in England and Hong Kong, one (Yuan Tseh Lee) in Taiwan, and one (Gao Xingjian) has done his writings in France. One other (the Dalai Lama) is not ethnically Chinese. Although he is highly respected everywhere he goes in the world, he is loathed in the People’s Republic of China — and only there.

Dear Members of Government of the People’s Republic of China:

Does it not give you reason to ask yourselves why so many of your people’s best thinkers feel the need to leave the land of their ancestors?

Your artists, your philosophers and your scientists have so much to contribute to the entire world. They are your best ambassadors, your best assets. We want to hear from them. We all need them to make the world a better and more civilized place.

Wouldn’t it be time to let them do that? Wouldn’t it be better to give them all your support, so that they may earn even more respect for your culture, for the success of your country and for the countless virtues of the Chinese people?

Respectfully,

Reinhard Kargl :.

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