Hello my Darling Wife & Son 

So begin many of the letters my grandfather wrote to my grandmother during World War II, soon after they were married, every day for seven months in 1945.

He was 30. Still a kid really. A new husband and father, and he must have been scared. 

He worked as an electrician’s mate on the U.S.S. Onslow, a Navy seaplane tender ship in the South Pacific, halfway around the world from home among the flat fields of Ohio. 

The letters are full of ordinary things, routine tasks and duties, longing and love. 

They are a beautiful comfort to me. A small window into my grandparents as a young couple, into the roots of my ordinary American, Midwest family.

The man I knew as my grandfather was emotionally reserved and physically weary compared to the young man writing his new wife every day. Still, he cherished his family and took great care in tending the tomato plants and peach trees in his back yard. He made Christmas wreaths out of pinecones and built corner shelves with a jigsaw.

By the time they were my grandparents, Bill and Margaret had been married nearly 30 years. I remember them as devoted, respectful companions, though not particularly affectionate.

Comfort through Connection

I turned to the letters out of curiosity, longing for connection to my family-of-origin, longing for my dad — who was slipping away when I first learned the letters existed.

By then, my maternal grandmother had shared some of the love story of my maternal grandparents — both World War II veterans who were also married nearly 50 years.

But my father’s side was a total mystery.

My uncle, my dad’s only brother who lived in California, found the stacks of letters in their father’s tidy handwriting, in my dad’s stuff — which included my grandmother’s keepsakes — and gave them to me before he died.

This snapshot of my grandparents’ love story is so comforting. Despite the divorces of their sons, we — their children and grandchildren — came from love.

Four Tidy Bundles

My grandfather wrote nearly every day from March to November 1945. 

There are four bundles of letters. I don’t have to know all their words. Just pulling the stacks from safekeeping and touching the faded ink swirls of my grandfather’s handwriting is soothing to me. 

The letters are enclosed and protected in identical air mail envelopes 3 ½ inches by 7 ½ inches. Three stacks are gathered with thin twine, a fat white ribbon secures the fourth. Most of the envelopes have a dirty tan patina with red and blue stripes. 

My grandmother’s name, Margaret, in my grandfather’s handwriting in faded blue and black ink marks each envelope. They bear a brick red air mail postage stamp, a Navy postmark with the date, and a “passed by censor” stamp.

That stamp is probably why the letters give little indication of what it was really like to serve on board that ship: The comings and goings of airplanes, watching for submarines or the invasion of Okinawa, all of which I’ve read about online.

He first wrote on March 9, 1945, from what I can tell so far. From the ship’s history I can find online, Onslow sailed exactly two weeks later in preparation for the invasion of Okinawa.

“Ordinary” Days in Extraordinary Times

Generally, the letters follow a script:

“Hello my Darling Wife & Son” — or sometimes “Joey” instead of son.

He was referring to my uncle, who was just starting to talk and “into everything.” My dad was not born until after the war, in 1948.

After he asks how they are doing, he adds: “Fine and dandy I hope.”

He reports on whether he’s received mail from back home, and describes some assortment of daily rituals: the movie playing that night in the mess hall, a recent card game, whether all of his clothes properly reappeared from the laundry, whether it’s been hot or cool at night. And he writes about what’s next: a nap, a hot shower, a shave, a cup of joe.

Part of a Love Story

The letters, I thought, would help me better understand the men in my father’s family and the fathers they became, to better understand their stories that became the roots of my story.

My grandfather clearly pines for his young son, so they helped a little.

The way my grandfather closes his letters always give me goosebumps. He pours out his heart, and in my mind’s eye I see a young man, scared, so very far from home and just deeply longing for his wife and child.

“Well darlings for tonite then loads of love and hugs and kisses to the ones I love more than anything in the world. Your loving husband & Dad.”

He signs them “Bill,” then adds at the bottom “I love you – I miss you.”

That’s when the comfort of the letters washes over me. They are touchstones and reminders that my grandparents were in love — the long-lasting, golden anniversary kind. 

And I remember that my parents must have been in love, too. Short and fleeting, but love nonetheless. My parents’ marriage did not last nearly as long as my grandparents’, but I like to think for at least a little while it was just as real, just as grand and sweet.

In my family, like many families, a lot went off the rails. Yet, we are all part of a beautiful love story — it’s right there, in my grandfather’s handwritten letters.