My Aunt Patricia was born in Ohio in 1928 and she passed in 1985 after a long struggle with leukemia. Had she lived she would have been in her 80’s now. In her youth it was long before smart phones and personal computers so therefore what was social media? If you wanted to communicate with people across the miles you probably sent a letter via US Mail. Telephones were available but long distance calls were very expensive and considered a luxury.

What I have to share in the posts that follow is what I consider to be a “different kind of social media”. What you see here is a collection of cards, letters and mementoes in their original envelopes that my Aunt carefully collected, filed and preserved from pen pals around the world. She started this journey in late 1941 as a young teenager and she filled 4 scrapbooks through the years to 1946. These were not the fancy decorated scrapbooks of today with lovely paper and colorful embellishments but rather brown paper pages with cellophane tape and simple entries noting the day each letter was received. Each letter though was a treasure, a note from a friend she had never met, a contact from a foreign country or a soldier fighting for the freedoms of our country. Each one had a story to tell and a perspective different from the others.

This was a time of  the second world war, fear, rations and simple family values. Perhaps Patricia’s parents and teachers encouraged the letter exchange as a fun, and innovative way to become more educated about other cultures, improve her reading and writing skills, or to start a stamp collection, or just make a friend from a far away place. Whatever the reason is that she started this journey it was one that she clearly took seriously because she maintained some of these relationships throughout her adult life.

I had the opportunity to read through these albums after they came into my possession years ago and found them fascinating because of the history and the insights during that time in history. My interest was recently re-ignited in exploring the pages of these books after I was contacted though Facebook by the daughter of one of my Aunt’s pen-pals. I gathered the boxes from storage and it only took a few minutes to find the letters from her mother across the miles from over 70 years ago. What a cherished gift that should be shared!

So be patient with me and sit back, relax and allow yourself to imagine a simpler time and I will take you through her letters week by week where you will meet her collection of pen-pals from around the world.