But, here I felt my first pang of unease.  This is a beautiful story, but is it one I have a right to tell?  I’m an interloper here, prying into the very private correspondence of young lovers who likely never shared these letters with anyone else, and certainly never would have guessed they’d end up being sold to a stranger. Does my desire for ‘entertainment’ or learning trump their expectation of privacy – even beyond the grave?  It’s a tough question.  I LOVE history, archaeology, anthropology- learning about the lives of those who’ve come before us.  And in order to try to understand people you’ll never meet, you must know what you can of their thoughts, dreams, beliefs, and relationships, not just the dates on a timeline from birth to death.   But this isn’t theoretical anymore, I’m sitting here with private letters in my hands- bursting to share them with others.  One of my many nagging irrational fears is that my own personal diaries would be read after I die someday.  They are definitely not anything I want shared with strangers!  And yet, I can never totally destroy them, because they are a record of times in my life, my struggles and victories.  I must honor them because they are a tangible record that I was here.   I want to honor these letters, too.

The first decision I made was to withhold Larry & Joy's real names, and the initial info I shared about them was under pseudonyms.  {EDIT 1/19/2024: Larry & Joy's daughter asked me to use their real names, so I will :)}  Whatever I decided next, at least I felt good that their true identities would stay private.  My internet research quickly led me to the names of Larry & Joy's two children- a son and a daughter.  Their son has already passed away, but their daughter is living (and she’s a professional musician which is so cool to me!).  I couldn’t shake the thought of- what would I want in this situation- if these letters were written by my own family members?  If it were me, and these were letters written by my parents or grandparents I would absolutely want to know- I’d want to gather them back into my family to cherish their memories.  However, I also know (from painful personal experience) that not all families stay together or want to look back into the past.  Maybe these letters were unwanted at some point and purposely sold off.  I couldn’t know that yet.  But I was absolutely sure that I needed to give the family the chance to make this decision.  The letters belong to them much more than they could to me, so I found some contact information for their daughter and sent her an ‘I know you have no idea who I am, but I found these letters…’ kind of message. So awkward! I offered her the letters if she and her family would like to have them returned.  I told myself not to read any more until I heard back, attempting to keep the privacy intact for the time being.

I only made it about 40 hours before my itch to read more won out over waiting for a response to my message.  As the next week passed with no response, I decided that I should at least do something to better organize and preserve the letters so they don’t deteriorate anymore.  I ordered some very basic archival supplies off of Amazon and set up a cataloguing spreadsheet.  (After all I do have a degree in Museum Studies that I haven’t yet gotten to really use, and I always loved the process of cataloging and photographing historic objects in the museum internships and volunteer work I did years ago.)  So, to me this feels like play time!  I decided on a simple numbering system and a plan to document the descriptive details of each letter:

• Date
• Author
• Place of postmark
• Key topics discussed
• Interesting physical features of the letters themselves, such as doodles, letterhead, etc.

I already knew I wanted to start sharing and writing about these people if I could, so why not get organized from the get-go? I’ve been typing up each letter in full, photographing it, then sliding it into a protective, acid-free plastic sleeve along with its envelope, to rest snugly in a 3-ring binder.

Additionally, I’ve kept trying to research Larry & Joy's lives and family using Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, and whatever Google searches I think of.  I’ve already learned a lot that will be taking me to the county historical societies near me, and on some small road trips this spring. I’d like to go and see the places they lived, visit their graves, and share the sweetness of their romance with all of you.  Is this a bit obsessive? Maybe, but don’t lots of great stories require this kind of deep dive? Larry & Joy are fast becoming a proxy for me to learn more about my adopted home state; WWII history (which I was never all that interested in before); a love story that both lets me into the experience of others while at the same time helping me reminisce & process my own love story; and American life & culture in the 1940s-1950s.   The connections are far-reaching, and this is the magic of material culture- these are gateways into the past – in whatever ways we’re inspired to explore!

Two more weeks passed, then three.  I sent another set of messages to their daughter, still offering to return the letters but also asking for permission to share and write about them.  No response.  I also started looking into copyright laws, to see if these letters would fall into the public domain yet or not. At first I thought that the copyright protections would still be in place for the next 20-30 years (crushing!), but I decided to reach out to a copyright lawyer to be sure, and I got the great news that because the letters were all written prior to 1976 and were never published, the copyright protections have long-since expired and they are public domain.  This still doesn’t 100% calm my nerves about wanting the family’s permission/ blessing, but I feel so pulled to this project that I’m moving forward.

In my snooping/ detective work, I called the Copper Awning back to ask for the name and contact info for the vendor who had offered the letters for sale.  They were kind enough to connect us and I was able to learn a bit more about the provenance of the letters:

• The letters were found inside an old trunk, along with some other documents and military uniforms.
• The trunk was in a storage unit here in Louisville, whose contents were all sold to an estate buyer about 18 months ago. The seller’s husband had died ‘a few years’ prior, and the storage unit contained furniture and items related to her late husband’s family that she did not want to keep. (I haven’t confirmed yet, but I believe that this woman’s late husband must have been Larry & Joy's son.)
• The vendor has only recently had time to open up the trunk and she was really surprised by the contents! She couldn’t bear to throw the letters out, so she divided them into the bundles I ended up buying.

I asked if she’d let me see the other contents of the trunk that she still has- and she’s agreed!  We’re planning to meet up sometime after the New Year.  She said that other than the letters and uniforms, the trunk contained some postcards and not much else.  But of course, at this point I want to see anything & everything connected to Larry & Joy- and these may be Larry’s uniforms which would be awesome to see!