There’s not much news in Dart’s letter, but there’s a “whole lotta heart.”  He’s envious of her freedom to sunbathe. It is forbidden at the hospital, but some of the guys do it anyway. “… did you ever see a rule that was not disobeyed?”, he asks.

He still has the ice bag, which he is coming to loathe. It’s such a bother to sleep with and he’s wet all day as a result of its leaking. Still, he says his case is not as serious as some. He’ll tell her what he means by that if she’s ever curious.

Dot had vowed in a recent letter that she would never loose faith in him or in the two of them until it had been proven to be a hopeless case. “You’re so good to me and so faithful. There’ll be darned few times when the case is hopeless, and I’ve a feeling we’ll stick together even through those.”

He asks for nothing from Dot except that she continue to be the same sweet, wonderful girl she is now and that she wait for him until they can be together and make important decisions. He vows to do the same. “By the time we can be together again, I’ll try to make myself a better person, more worthy of your love.”

His emphatic final paragraph exudes an eagerness to see her again. He wants to talk about the things he was thinking of when he wrote that previous paragraph. The poor boy is consumed with homesickness for her.

Delighted that her new stationery finally arrived, Dot settles in to tell Dart about her upcoming 24-hour day. She’ll work at the store from 10:00 until 5:00 when she leaves to babysit Chuck Pecsock, age 2-1/2. Chuck’s mother just gave birth to a daughter, so Dot will provide dinner for Chuck and his dad and stay overnight until it’s time to go back to work. The family has decided they’ll need her for about two weeks.  “It looks like I’m destined to live away from home, even when I’m in town,” she writes.

She has other childcare jobs lined up in the future and likes the idea of padding her bank account so nicely.

She disagrees with Dart that his friends getting engaged is a sign they are all growing up. Dot has seen too many young people get engaged with no apparent idea of what that really means. Still, she sends “Angel” her best wishes for a happy engagement and subsequent marriage.

After thanking Dart for the instructions he sent about how her friends might find him for a visit, she reminds him who these young ladies are. Andy Daubney is the one who says she looks like Betty Grable, Marian Miller is the girl who sat on the pie Dot had left on her bed, and Doris Phinney who was introduced to Dart as the class wit. Now being mentioned in this humble blog has extended their fame by a microscopic amount, 70 years later. I wonder if these letters will reveal whether or not they ever ventured out to Great Lakes Naval Hospital.

She tells Dart she can take a vacation a year from May 15. I doubt he’ll still be around to spend any of that time with her. Certainly not if the Navy has any say in the matter, and I believe they most certainly do!

Finally she quips that if the furniture in the living room of Dart’s dream was in need of reupholstering, he was most assuredly dreaming of her living room!