Blog 3423- 03.18.2025
A Man of Letters
Pictured above is probably the first letter that was ever addressed to me. I was the “and Son” noted in the address. The letter was a Christmas card sent from Detroit, Michigan by my Lily, my grandpa’s wife (my brother and I never called her grandma, but Lily because that is what my mother always called her. Paw Paw (that is what my brother and I called our grandpa) and Lily lived in Detroit with their children William, Lamar, Richard, and Patsy. My mother and her two older sisters Katherine and Lucille and a younger brother James (who was called Buddy) were Paw Paw’s children by his first wife Jessie who died shortly after Buddy was born. Buddy also lived with Paw Paw and Lily in Detroit. Before my second birthday my Mom, Dad, and new baby brother Robert moved there too.
I have received and written a lot of letters in this particular seventy-five year adventure in time and space. When I was nine my aunt and uncle and their two children, Mike and Karen, visited my family before they moved to Hawaii for a couple years. My dad’s sister Sybil was married to a Marine and Charles was about to be stationed in Honolulu and was taking his family with him. Aunt Sybil said that she would write to me and that if I would write her back that we could be pen pals, that she would write every time I did. She was true to her word and I wrote her every time I got a letter from her.
Nine years later on my eighteenth birthday, which took place five months after I graduated high school, I signed up to join the U.S. Army. I had asked my dad to sign for me but he refused saying that I would have no one, but myself, to blame for that decision. He was a lot wiser than I gave him credit for at the time. I missed my family and friends, especially my girlfriend, terribly. I wrote two letters every day, even during my eight weeks of Basic Training when we had scarcely ten minutes of free time before lights out. Sometimes I finished those two letters, one to my girlfriend and one to my mother, in the dark. Barely a year after Basic I had orders to go the Vietnam and while on leave before going to ‘Nam I talked my girlfriend into sneaking off to get married. I continued writing two letters daily from Vietnam, one to my wife and one to my mom. I also wrote every family member and friend that I had an address for. I remember being quite surprised at how few people wrote me back.
Over the years, in school, I wrote essays, in Journalism class newspapers articles, poetry, and editorials. In college I wrote term papers and during my short career as a Christian minister, Children’s pastor and Associate Pastor I wrote sermons and Sunday School lessons. But it is love letters that are my favorite form of writing.
Sometimes this blog may seem like a newspaper article, editorial, essay, sermon, or lesson but I am ever aiming to write something entertaining, enlightening, or encouraging and to me what embodies all three of those best is a love letter from the heart.
Therefore, I hope that you my dear readers will come to interpret my familiar salutation: “Your friend and fellow traveler” as just my way of saying “I love you.”
Your friend and fellow traveler.
David James White
Pat Boone- Love Letters in the Sand (lyrics)
theencouragingword 