On October 20, 1943, a correspondence began which would grow to 6,000 hand-written pages over three and a half years. It spanned the globe and laid the foundation for an epic romance.
The stars of this story are my parents. You can find an introduction to them on the “Background” section of this site.
This blog is my commitment to share their incredible war-time correspondence day-by-day, as it originally unfolded. Here, you will see images of their letters, pictures of Mom and Dad and a little commentary about what was going on around them as they exchanged their letters. I welcome questions and comments and I hope my mother and my siblings will chime in with details and more stories.
The Set-up
The first letter from Dart came very shortly after the two teenagers met on a group blind date. The date was arranged by a classmate of Dot’s at Andrews School for Girls. It involved four girls from that school and four guys from Case University in Cleveland. Dot and Dart were not each other’s assigned dates that night, but they only had eyes for each other. In this first letter, Dart is returning a little program from the dance they had all attended that Dot had asked him to hold for her. He wastes no time in asking her out for her next “date night,” an occasion which did not occur very often at Andrews School. We get a clue to his character when he writes that he hopes her next scheduled date night is not this coming Saturday, because he’s already made rather firm plans. He says he could get out of them, but it would require telling a whale of a lie – which he is most reluctant to do.
Dart keeps the letter light and newsy, but his intentions are clear. He wants to hear from her!
Hi Susan ,
Thanks for getting this started! I think it’s a great idea (as long as Mom is cool with it!). One minor glitch I wanted to point out…I could not get the second page of the first letter to come up. I wonder if others are experiencing this or if it is a technical problem on my end. Thanks again for doing this!
TP
Hey Tom,
The second page seems to work for me. (On another machine.) Let me know if you continue to have problems. I’ll try a couple of more just to see.
Tim
Yay! Have been waiting so long for this!! Thanks Susan!
Thanks, Susan! This will be great. It was only by the accident of a straying finger that I got the letter large enough to read. Tom, I got both pages to come up.
BTW, the “program” was a dance card on which the girl wrote the names of the guy she had agreed to dance with for each dance.
That’s right, Nancy. Dot refers to it in her response letter as a “tally.”
I am so excited to see you start this journey! What a commitment, what a daughter AND most of all, what a “story”!
Any way you can add a “Subscribe” button or am I getting too ahead of the game?
Bobbie
At last! I get to read the wonderful letters you parents wrote to each other over the years. I can’t wait to read the next one.
How did the Bloomingdale’s ads for fake Gucci bags and such get on this blog?!
Bloomingdale’s is gone, now. Whew! Maybe I was seeing something….
We patrol the site daily in search of spam, but sometimes it still gets through, temporarily. When we find it, we send it to the spam can.