We have long letters from both the correspondents today. Dart finally settled in to answer four of Dot’s recent letters. He began with a full report on the physical exam he had mentioned in yesterday’s letter. The exam didn’t happen. It seems the doctor was too hungover to be able to complete the task, so it may be rescheduled at some future date.

Commenting on Dot’s destroying of the silly letters she’d written, Dart asked “Now what will we have to laugh about in our future years?” I wonder if Dot got a little thrill when she read that bit about future years?

He’s happy to hear that Mr. Schwartz thinks so highly of Dot. Dart agrees – she is his favorite pin-up girl, sales girl, everything! He also indicated he had no intention of “watching his step” and warned that Mr. Schwartz had better watch his!

Mid-way through the letter, he admits it isn’t turning out to be such a great one. The problem is that he stops periodically to dream about her, and the minutes race by. “You may be sure all my thoughts are of you and they’re tender and gentle. I’ll tell ’em to you sometime – if…”

The patients in his new place are allowed to listen to their radios until 10:30. Since the majority of the guys prefer a mystery program to the Fred Waring show, he usually doesn’t get to listen to Waring. Still, he tries to think about Dot at precisely 10:15. He’s not sure how her telepathy experiment is supposed to work, but he’s trying to cooperate nonetheless.

He believes that having her cheerful face smiling at him from the picture frame on his locker is doing him more harm than good. It makes him so homesick that he doesn’t know how he’ll stand it if they don’t have a chance to see each other.

Changing the mood, he tells the story of two sailors from across his ward who went out on liberty the other night. One is Catholic and the other Protestant. They went to the USO in Chicago and were mistaken for “followers of the Hebrew faith.” They accepted an offer for dinner and were ushered into a Passover Seder. They had quite a tale to tell about their experience while the Jewish sailor on the ward stewed that he had been unable to attend. I imagine that the opportunity to bump into religious observances of differing faiths was less common back then than it is today and the Passover traditions must have seemed quite exotic to these young men.

He reiterated his wishes that Dot and his parents could meet before she leaves town. His folks are a little nervous about how to entertain a young lady they’ve never met, but Dart says he firmly believes that all parties would feel at ease once they are together.

He described what the well-dressed hospitalized sailors are wearing this Easter season (dress blues and black shoes) and hopes she had a lovely time at Ardy’s and Janice’s homes over the holiday. Finally, he thanked Dot for the quotation of hope and happiness in her recent letter and assured her of his constant love.

Dot’s long, long letter is bursting with her effusive report of a visit to Dart’s home in Cleveland. She had called his family to wish them a happy Easter and ended up spending three hours having dinner in their apartment. She is totally smitten with his parents and his younger brother Burke. She writes that the high expectations she  had built up for his family over the past months were far exceeded by the reality of them. She deemed them the most nearly perfect family she’d ever met. Having met his family, she feels she knows him 100% better and likes him 100 times more.

She talked about attending Easter services with Janice’s family and wishing she and Dart could have attended them together. She told about her impulsive phone call to Greenwich and the thrill of hearing the voices of some of her own family. Afterward she called Dart’s parents and found the conversation so much easier than past phone calls, now that they all knew each other.

She had met her hometown friend Cynthia for dinner and a movie in Cleveland. The movie was “The Purple Heart” which was too dense for Dot to comprehend, she claims.

The mention of her Easter phone call to his folks launched Dot on another rave review of her evening with them. They told charming stories of Dart as a youngster. They worry about his health. They’re grateful he’s not in the Pacific somewhere.

She wrapped up this first installment of the letter by wishing Dart and millions of others would be home, safe and sound by next Easter.

Just a few hours back at her friend’s house, and Dot feels the urge to write some more. She writes more details of her visit to his home, including her little faux pas of referring to men over 40 as “old.” Mr. Peterson wouldn’t let her live that down all evening.

She admitted that it seemed evident he would not be home before she left for Greenwich, but she likes to imagine that he’ll be stationed at the Naval base not far from her family home. She believes that with her, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder,” but for him, it may be more of a case of “out of sight, out of mind.” (She obviously has not received his latest letter yet.)

She boldly signs off with “All my love, for ever and ever.”