The Lost Art of Letter Writing

In discussing my blog posts, daughter Kim mentioned the old practice of writing letters. My aunts wrote each other almost daily. When I was away from home I could count on getting a letter from my mother written each week when she was at "Ye Olde Haire Repaire". Even travelling abroad you could get mail through the American Express office in whatever city you were visiting if the correspondent knew about when you'd be there.

Now it is really a lost art. So much of history has been learned from letters written to and by now famous and not-so-famous people. We glean information about their lives and times that otherwise might be lost. In centuries to come are historians and other researchers going to be able to access emails or Facebook posting or Tweets for information about people's everyday lives in the way letters can be studied?

My father was a great letter writer. Even as a teenager he typed (!) letters flawlessly with correct spelling and grammar. He and my mother wrote letters to each other daily when he was in the Navy during WWII. And, wonder of wonders, they each saved them all! I am in the process of putting them in order (they've gotten mixed up due to being transferred from box to box over time) but it's slow going because I keep wanting to stop and read them.

One letter, written by my mother in 1935 (the year before they were married) to Daddy on his birthday, was sort of sticking up out of a pile of other correspondence, so I chose to read it. She said in a P.S. "Don't you think this will be a "sweet" note for our children to read some day--". How prophetic! We're so glad it was saved!

The letters my children wrote to me are a treasure, as are the few from grandaughter Hannah. She writes beautifully. Grandson Will's handwriting (both cursive and manuscript) is almost illegible. What I would give to have a letter or two from him preserving it!

I have a drawer full of stationery and note cards collected over the past 30+ years just begging to be used. (Some may be older than that. Remember the old Easerase paper we used to type on in college? I still have some.) Too bad I don't have anyone special to write to. And too bad I'm too cheap to spend postage to write friends and family when a phone call or a computer note will do. I'll just have to leave it up to someone else to preserve "the lost art of letter writing".