Your Gift to the Future: Why You Should Write Letters

I was staring out the window on our way home from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Rocky Ridge Farm lost in thought. We had toured the museum which housed a lot of Laura’s things, including a vast amount of correspondence between her, her sisters, and parents. There were even letters from her parents’ generation in the 1850's and '60's.

It was amazing to me to be able to read everyday details about people who lived 150 years or more ago: so-and-so had taken ill and died, the crops for that particular year were good, congratulations on the birth of a niece or nephew. These letters gave me a window into the past. Without them I never would have known these people existed or what they had been like.

I compared them to myself. And in doing so, I realized that their lives really were not all that different than mine. I work, just as they did. I've lost friends and family members to death, just as theirs did. I have my own thoughts and opinions about national and world events going on during my time in history, just as they did in theirs.

Then it hit me. In this era of emails and computer storage, how will my descendants learn anything about my life and how I lived it?

"Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Today’s military soldiers and their families face no different circumstances than my father and his parents did. Soldiers are still deployed far from home for extended periods of time, but modern conveniences have made it easy to bridge the miles.

Skype is a wonderful invention. It allows families to see each other face to face. Emails can be sent and read by their recipient within minutes. So why should we still write letters?

Letters are a tangible thing. Soldiers’ children and grandchildren can see a side of them they never knew, especially if they were killed in action. Letters are a physical thing that a person can touch and know that their loved one held this once and poured their soul out in words to their families back home.

These family letters are invaluable to me because they were written by my father. But, they are also invaluable to us all because they give us insight into the times surrounding World War II.

Letters written by soldiers today will be just as valuable in the years to come. Not only to their children and grandchildren, but to historians who can use them as a tool to learn about how military life was during wartime.

A few years ago my cousins and I found some old letters in the attic of my grandparents’ abandoned farmhouse.  These letters were written by my grandparents in the early thirties before they married.

The Depression had hit my grandfather hard. To earn money before he married my grandmother, my grandfather had gone west to Oregon to work on the railroad and anyplace else he could find a job.

In his letters, he told my grandmother about Oregon and the type of work he was doing. He asked her how she was doing and told her how much he couldn’t wait for them to get married. It was sweet to read about two teenagers planning the rest of their lives together.

We've all read about The Great Depression in school. There's been numerous television documentaries made that tell us about that particular time in history and how hard it was for everyday people. But reading firsthand experiences, especially from my grandparents, gave me insight into how hard life truly was. I learned how my grandparents made it through tough times with tenacity and love.

Will our descendants know how we responded to such things as our current recession? September 11th? How about the Boston bombings? All they will know is whatever is written down in history books and what may or may not survive in our current media format.

They won’t be able to read personal stories of their great grandparents because there are too few of us putting pen to paper.

I've always been a letter writer. I liked to send and receive letters like some people like to collect stamps or trading cards. It was an offbeat hobby.

I still have letters I received from pen pals from Korea when I was in second grade. I've saved letters from a good friend from high school I wrote to when he was in the Iraqi War.

My most treasured letters are from my father. When I was very young, my mother and I would spend summers in Missouri while my father stayed here in Florida. He and I would write letters back and forth to each other. I'd tell him about new things I did or learned there, and he'd tell me how my cats were doing and to be a good girl.

I've sadly gotten out of the habit of writing letters. I stopped because I would never receive a response from people I wrote to. It was very discouraging because I had thought of a person, taken the time to write them, and they didn't respond. 

So, please, if you receive letters, write that person back and let them know you appreciate receiving their letters in the mail. They are actually giving you a part of themselves.

Letter writing can be difficult to someone who's never done it, but it's really quite easy. I always recommend starting small, like thank you notes and good wishes inside greeting cards, and then moving on to letters.

With letters, it's best to just write as if you were carrying on a conversation. Write about what you've been up to, or something that you find interesting in your neck of the woods. Ask your recipient how they're doing, wish them well, and add any words of encouragement.

Though they seem like mundane things, it offers a chance for others sneak a peak at the world around you.

Also, be sure to save any letters that you receive, especially if they are from family or close friends. This will give them a chance to speak to your children and grandchildren years after they've written that letter to you.