What ever happened to love letters?

Published 2:32 am Thursday, February 14, 2008

By Staff
The Smithsonian Institute has opened a new exhibit in one of their galleries entitled "A Thousand Kisses: Love Letters from the Archives of American Art."
I read about this in an article written by Paul Richard of the Washington Post. Letters from several artists are on display in Washington, D.C. though not all of them are love letters.
I wrote about letters a few years back and the demise of letter writing. I don't like to write letters and therefore never do except at Christmas time when I often write a short note to someone far away. But for the most part, letter writing is not one of my favorite pastimes.
I have known a number of people who were or are letter writers. My mother-in-law, Mildred Boepple Meister, was a letter writer. She would use two rolls of stamps every winter when she was in Florida, that's 200 letters.
She had a long list of people she regularly corresponded with. One of her greatest joys was going to the mailbox and taking out several letters, taking them into the house, sitting in her favorite chair and spending however many minutes it took to read her letters. It was an afternoon delight for her.
Mildred thought that a legal size envelope was a waste of paper so she wrote all of her letters on regular typing paper that she had cut in half with her little paper cutter. Writing on both sides of the paper, she then only had small letters that fit into a small envelope. For a few cents in postage she kept in touch with her family and friends. For her it was too expensive to make a long distance telephone call.
In her letters, she often included little snippets of newspaper clippings that she thought might interest you. For all of the letters that she wrote to me I don't think I saved any of them. How sad!
But I have saved the letters my husband Dick sent to his grandmother when he was in the Army, stationed in Korea. When they cleaned out his grandmother's house, they found the letters very neatly tied together and in a drawer.
They gave them to Dick and I have saved them for his children and grandchildren to enjoy some day. I'm sure they will treasure them because their dad has never written them a letter and they probably don't think he would ever write letters.
Now I won't say he has never written to me over the past 50 years. Once in our lean years, (early married years), he wrote me a poem for my birthday because at the time that was all he could afford. Another time he wrote me a letter for my birthday. But letter writing was not his forte either.
What ever happened to the time of pen pals? That seems to be another generation ago.
I remember as a young girl picking the name of someone out of a pen pal magazine and starting a writing friendship. Many people forged long lasting friendships with pen pals. It was a hobby and a time before television, computers, cell phones.
War time always encouraged letter writing. Young men away from home looked forward to that connection to someone back home. But now it is done by computer or cell phone and not usually saved.
The Smithsonian thinks that letter writing was killed by the telephone. And now e-mail has taken its place. Perfect spelling has almost disappeared with the kind of e-speak that telecommunicators use. It is a type of shorthand that everyone seems to know or understand.
U no what I mean? LOL
She is a third generation Edwardsburg resident.