On behalf of myself and my sisters, Beth and Martha, I must thank my Kite cousins, Cynthia and Linda, who returned our father’s war letters to Beth, several years ago. As far as we know, they were kept by my grandmother, A, and when she died, they were recovered by her daughter Anne, fittingly the recipient of Daddy’s first letter which I have titled, “Waiting for the Call.” Some time after Anne’s death, her daughters sent them to us.
Beth went through the letters meticulously – all 167 of them. Almost all had multiple pages. She gathered those pages together, matched them with their envelopes, and put them in chronological order.
And about those envelopes – those beautiful, precious envelopes! – each bearing Daddy’s familiar hand and garnished with the crayon scribblings of Cynthia and Betsy and David, the little nieces and nephew who spent the war years at Lone Mountain, waiting with their Grandmother for the next letter from their Uncle Roger.
