Photo courtesy U.S. Deparment of Defense   Help keep your family’s history alive Launched in 1998, the Legacy Project is a national, all-volunteer initiative that encourages Americans to remember our nation’s service members and veterans by preserving their wartime letters and e-mails. If you would like to submit a war letter (or letters) to the Legacy Project, send a legible photocopy or typed transcript of the material to Legacy Project, P.O. Box 53250, Washington, DC 20009, or go online to graceunderfire.us for information.

Boys became a scarce commodity in high school because they went off to war as soon as they graduated. I remember that day in 1943 when two cousins of mine came to visit us and persuaded me to ride back on the bus to Birmingham to visit them for a week. This was an unusual chance for me, so I went. When I came home, I learned that you had already gone into the Navy. You had come to see me but I was not there. Since we had no telephone, there was no way to call me, and I had thought you were not leaving until the next week.

I remember how I walked out of the house, ran to the end of our garden, and collapsed in tears. I sobbed so loudly that I was afraid our neighbors on the connecting farm would hear me. But I didn’t care! You had left and there was no way I could make connection with you. All my crying couldn’t bring you back long enough for me to say goodbye.

Then the waiting began. I prayed for a letter from you each day. Th e year after you graduated I was still in high school and another classmate, Al, began coming around to see me. Once he asked me to go out with his family in a boat that he and his brothers had built, then for a picnic on the lake. So I went, for life was so dull and empty at that stage. I was greatly surprised when, although I had only been seeing him for a month, he asked me to marry him. I remember laughing and telling him that I wasn’t fool enough to believe he meant it after only a month. But he kept coming around. Then he asked me if I’d just wear his class ring. So I wrote to you and asked you if you minded if I wore Al’s class ring.

How could I have known that your chief petty officer was telling the men that some of you would get a “Dear John” letter, and that you might as well expect it, for it was going to happen. And just at the time that I was stupid enough to ask you the question about the class ring of Al’s! He had been deferred for farming at his parent’s request. But one day he volunteered for the Navy and left also.

I never got the letter you wrote in reply to my letter. There was just silence! Day after day I heard nothing. Weeks came and went and still nothing. It wasn’t until I spoke with a neighbor friend that I learned, at last, why I had not heard from you for so long: One of my sisters had gotten my letter, read it, then destroyed it, and never told me!

Sue was away in college, so I wrote her and asked for your new address. Th is time I was watching when her reply came. I saw my sister go to the mailbox and hide the letter under her arm. I grabbed it from her and demanded to know why she was taking my mail and why she had destroyed my letter from you.

She replied that she had not gotten to marry the man she loved and did not think that the rest of the children should either. Dad had told her firmly that she would be sorry if she married the guy she was dating, that he drank and that he didn’t think he was suitable for her. So in her bitterness, she decided that none of the rest of us should be happy!

Now I had your address, and I could write to you. But it had been so long since I had heard from you that I decided you must not care about me anymore.

Fifty years went by, and I was living by myself in Alabama when, miraculously, I heard that you had moved to a nearby community. I couldn’t believe it!

I joined a senior exercise class where you were also going. I’ll admit that I had heard that you were also there. So one day I quietly entered the class and saw a slim, trim, older version of my high-school sweetheart. Your hair was no longer brown, but white. In fact, there was little left of it. There were lines in your face, as there were in mine. But the same happy twinkle was in your blue eyes when you looked at me. Although we had changed in looks, the same feelings were reflected in our faces.