An ordinary man

[msmemory_archive]

My father was not an extraordinary man in any way -- he wasn't famous, did not invent anything, never held political office, was not a war hero, did not rise far in his company or become wealthy. Nor did he do anything notorious.

I've got a box of letters, mostly those received by him rather than sent by him, which provide an interesting portrait of him in the 1930s and 1940s. Interesting to me, anyway. I opened the topmost dozen or so yesterday, which turn out to be a couple letters from his fraternity brothers chiding him for not writing while recovering from his appendectomy; notes from his girlfriend who would be his first wife, telling him which trains to meet for their weekend visits; a note from his brother at another college, in intentionally fractured "German," and a note from his uncle, recommending particular college courses to prepare for an engineering career.

It seems a shame to toss them, but is it worth it to keep them or organize them? They are interesting to me, because they shed light on what Dad was like as a young man, and also on the times (I know some of the notes date from his Annapolis days right after Pearl, for instance.). Would they be interesting to anyone else? Should I set them up into a book or scrapbook? (Uncle Truman's letters would have to be translated facing-page, his penmanship was so dreadful!) Should I sort out the college memorabilia, and offer it to their Archives? If I had a child to save them for, I would do so, but there's just me.

Comments

[antoniseb.livejournal.com]

It's hard to say. I can picture some future Ken Burns using them to typify an American life from this period. I have a great great great uncle who wrote and received some pretty unremarkable letters with very lame spelling and grammar to and from his mother and his sister (the sister was my Mothers, Mothers, Mothers, Mother). Now he was a Yankee stationed in the South during the Civil War, and died of illnes. My mother has one of these letters, and a museum in Hartford has most of the rest.

The letters say some interesting things abut the relationships between neighbors, and landlords and occupants during the 1860s. They say little of the plight of the soldier. But there they are, available for reading.

Note that my 4Gs Grandmother seems to ahve been illiterate, and some of the outbound letters were actually penned by a neighbor.