my dad entered the service in 1943.i was just entering the first grade at the time.
he never went overseas to fight,but he was trained and ready to go at an army base in Valdosta,Georgia.
he was lucky enough to be home on furlough when the war ended in 1945.
during his time in service, he often wrote many letters home to my mom and my two sisdters and me.
mom often read those letters to us many times during the period that he was gone.
i vaguely remember any of the contents,but i did remember how it cheered us up to hear from him.
as the years went on and i was growing up, i remember that my dad was a good father to us and took us as a family,on vacations,fishing trips,etc..
by the time i became an adult and settled down to marriage and a family, i remember that
we were never really close.
in fact,it wasn't until his last year on earth in 1978,that our relationship became closer.
after his passing,my mom divided his belongings among my two sisters and me.
among those belongings were all the letters that he had written to me while he was in service.
i never realized that he had written them directly to me and many of the covers or envelopes, had free franking on them.(during world war, two soldiers could write home free by just writing the word "free" in the area where the stamp would be applied on the cover.)
as i opened each of those letters and began to read them, i found out that my dad was closer to me than i ever knew.
the contents expressed his love to me and his dependence on me to be the "man of the house",while he was gone and to take care of my two sisters and to help my mom with the house work!
as i mentioned earlier, dad and i were not really close during my childhood,but he worked hard to provide for us and didn't talk a lot to us kids.
i never heard him say,"i love yoiu son," but those letters said it all to me and it seemed to clear up that void that i had felt in my life!
those letters now represent a piece of postal history and they are a joy to read,even to this day.
but more than anything else,they represent a wonderful feeling inside to know that how much my dad really did love me.
it's been a few years now since i last read those letters,but just yesterday i was cleaning out my closet and stumbled onto a box marked," childhood stuff"!
i felt compelled to dig out those letters and read them once again with pride.
Thank God for a dad that loved me and made me proud to be his son!
chuck
aka,tarheel