My Spark for writing came back after a season of necessity. Five long months of healing and distraction have given me words again that I need to share and stories to bring smiles to faces even through the tears I had coming down my face first. Life keeps moving

though and I saw God working through my trials of healing everyday.

Jewells of Thought

What Makes You Spark!

Walking Through History In Letters

Dates are always going off in my head. July 23, 1944 is one of those ‘days of infamy’ in my mind. So this year as usual dates of the letters come to mind when the dates circle round.

Today Monday, 17, 2023 is on a Monday like it was in 1944 when Grandpa penciled two letters today 79 years ago. One was for his Folks, and of course, My Dearest Betty. Now which one he wrote first I don’t know. However, his writing is different in the two letters. He was transferred from England to France literally, so his letters were a shorter V-Mail page.

The handwriting to his parents looks more lined and cleaner. The one to his girl looks more hap-hazard like he was in more of a hurry. Of course, they could have been written at different times during the day or over the course of a couple of days. He just wrote a letter two days earlier so I don’t know that he would ever have taken that long to write a letter.

Coming to the realization today that each day this week actually corresponds with that year it happened in 1944 was nearly… breathtaking.

Still… my thoughts like to play with the wonder of the what-ifs. What if something had been just a tiny bit different what would that have done to my dad and his sisters? Would I even be here?

Grandpa was on the verge of a harrowing life-experience. How did this change him to be the man I knew him to be later in life? So many questions to throw around and play conjecture with yet God did allow him to go through this experience and here I am now the woman I am now because in part of his experiences.

Now I feel a duty to remember his service time and to record and share this information. I know it wasn’t easy for him to talk about this time with his family especially with 5 daughters and one son, but I really wish we could have gotten him to open up more. It’s our Veterans that can show us what true Freedom is and our lawful immigrants coming from Communist Countries. They know what Freedom isn’t…

I am incredibly grateful to have these letters that our family can use to see a glimpse of this man, a soldier during wartime.

Garnetjewel

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2 responses to “Walking Through History In Letters”

  1. Aunt Irene Avatar
    Aunt Irene

    I loved seeing and reading this! So how many letters do you have from my brother? I would like to read them sometime

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    1. Garnetjewel Avatar
      Garnetjewel

      There were the five letters to his family and for the first time in March when Grandma moved into the residence we found the letters from Grandpa to Grandma. There are 15 of these little postcards and letters. I am trying to put together an originals book and my copies book and I want to put together a general timeline. Honestly, I don’t know how I got some of this stuff, but some things that belonged to our cousins have floated to me one way or another. I think by way of James Francis Jr. after his death. I have been overwhelmed and excited and wanting to protect some of the worse looking letters.The Bishop Reunion should be a good time or maybe even sometime that weekend, if you want more time to look at this stuff. We have quite an archive of documents including some of grandma’s crane documents. I was nearly in tears when this bag came into our house when mom and dad had come home from their first time all of the 6 kids going at it at Grandma’s. I had a book with 17 chapters finished until that bag came to me, now I don’t know how to plug the holes and there is still some research on names I need to do, but I lack a subscription I used to have with my digital newspapers. Hopefully that will change soon.

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