For my granddaughters.......The rewards of writing to a veteran

 When I was nineteen, my family moved to a new town. I was in nurses training at the time but came home on the weekends. One Sunday, I went to church and an older gentleman  came up to me and started to chat with me. Then he asked me if I would do him a favor. He said he had a son who was in Vietnam and he was wondering if I would write to him. (It was 1971, before the internet)

How could I say no? We were talking about one of America’s heroes who was lonely and would appreciate mail. And the gentleman was a nice guy with a great family. So I said “sure” and got the address. His Dad just happened to have it on him.

I wrote the letter telling the lonely soldier why I was doing it. While I waited for a reply I started asking some of the other girls at church about this guy. There was always a pause and then they would say something like, “he is nice.” Finally someone told me he was rather shy and a little timid around girls. He was one of those quiet guys.

I was personally looking for someone a little more outgoing, but hey, it was just letter writing, right?

Then his first letter came. Okay, maybe he had a problem talking to girls but he had no problem writing to them. His letters were well written and full of interesting details of his life in Vietnam.

As we continued to write, he started talking about his plans and dreams for when he finally got to come home. They were some of the same dreams I had. He and I got to know each other well during the months we wrote. I found myself doing the anxious anticipation thing; the postman was my “you’ve got mail” signal.  

Then it was time for him to come home. In his last letter from Vietnam he told me the first thing on his agenda was to get his dream car; a 1969 Orange Roadrunner. He said after he got it, he would pick me up at my house and take me for a ride in it. I was feeling a little nervous. Sure I knew his family, had enjoyed his letters and felt like I knew him a little but what if I found I didn’t like him at all after I met him?

Looking back now, I am thinking he was feeling a little anxious about meeting me too and the muscle car was the cure for his anxiety. Put a guy in his dream car and it gives him courage I think.

When he picked me up on a Sunday evening the first thing I noticed was his blue eyes and beautiful blond hair. (yes, my dear granddaughters, your grandpa used to have hair!) We got into his dream car and rode around for a little while, I think so I could admire the roar of its engine. We ended up at that park down by the river where we sat for hours; and believe it or not, the quiet guy did most of the talking. I guess twenty one years of talk had been building up in him and it just took the right girl to bring it out of him.

It has been 40 years now since I wrote that first letter, and the rewards have been wonderful.  God gave your Grandpa and me, three daughters and six granddaughters so he would always have women around to talk to.  

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.”-Karl Menninger