WESTSIDE — My mother has always been interested in family history. While raising six children, she pursued her hobby of researching and developing an extensive family tree with branches recording the names of grandparents that make up our lineage. Mom wanted to do more than simply fill in blank lines with names and dates; she was truly interested in the lives of those that came before us, whose characteristics her children inherited and whose faces we resembled.
She gathered information in many different ways, mostly without the use of the computerized data available today. Even though still a young teenager at the time she married my dad, Mom already had an understanding and appreciation for the insight into lives of the past that old letters can provide.
Early in their marriage my parents moved into a house that had once been the home of another family member and my mother had the foresight to preserve old letters that had been left as trash in a box in the attic. Sixty five years later she still has several of the old letters written to my greatgrandfather by relatives he had left behind in Kentucky when he moved to Arkansas in the late 1800s. Without my mother’s persistence, these written firsthand accounts of interesting family history would surely have been lost.
Maybe it was my mother’s interest in letters that prompted me to be a letter writer from early on. Or maybe it was the fact that writing letters used to be about the only way to keep in touch with friends when school was out. My family did not have a telephone until I was in the seventh grade, so during the summers before that I wrote letters to my school friends. My siblings and I also kept in touch with our cousins from other states by writingletters.
During my childhood I had one constant pen pal. Her name was Lisa and she lived in Schaefferstown, Penn. We started exchanging letters when I was 10 years old after I answered a pen pal request in a little paper I got in my Sunday school class. We continued to write faithfully for at least 20 years, sharing pictures, details about our families, and making comparisons about the schools we attended and in the way we were growing up. Once, she even visited me in Arkansas (the one and only time I have met her in person) and a few years later I spent an afternoon with her parents in Pennsylvania while vacationing in the area.
As time went on, Lisa and I both became busy raising our families, and our letter writing faded. She marriedand moved to California, became a nurse, and had two children. They later moved back to Pennsylvania to be closer to family and she and her husband Joe built a house.
That is about the time that we lost touch, until a week ago, that is, when Lisa crossed my mind while I was on Facebook. I typed her name into the search box and sure enough I was able to locate her and send an e-mail and a friend request. I was excited to get her reply and an e-mail catching me up to date with what is going on with her. She just returned from a mission trip to help on a reservation in South Dakota. Her family is still very sports oriented - not surprising since her dad was a coach and her son played baseball in college. Her children are grown and both will be getting married this summer. She is understandably busy just now, but we are finding time to stay in touch and I feel I have reunited with a long lost friend.
My correspondence with Lisa will, no doubt, be electronic from now on, but I have been thinking back to all the handwritten letters we have exchanged in the past. I kept most of the ones she sent me but I am not entirely sure now of where I have put them. My guess is that they are stored in a box in the attic, maybe just waiting to be discovered someday by somebody like my mother.
Annette Rowe is a freelance writer from rural Gentry and a speech-language pathologist at Siloam Springs High School. She may be reached by e-mail at awalkinthepark50 @ yahoo.com.
Opinion, Pages 6 on 07/06/2011