Digitizing Dad’s Letters

My parents were married in March of 1943. Dad was drafted and began his Army career in September, leaving behind an 18-year-old bride and their 4-month-old daughter. He wrote letters to her almost every day while he was away, and mom saved every one of them.

The letters survived moves to Hawaii, Kansas, Colorado, Michigan, and finally Illinois, where they endured 40 years of storage in several basements. I discovered them in 2000 and brought them to my home in Dallas.

I got motivated in 2006 and began sorting through the boxes crammed full of envelopes and their fragile contents. The letters painted a vivid picture of the first years of my parents’ marriage and highlighted the difficulties they encountered in their roles as spouse, soldier, and parent.

Many of the letters contained memorabilia enclosed by my father. Photographs, passes, foreign currency, postcards and chewing gum wrappers all provided an additional bit of color and ambiance to what was written.

I quickly came to the conclusion that the collection should be digitized and immediately began scanning the letters and envelopes. This would prove to be the first of several digitization efforts.

I was well over halfway through creating what would eventually be more than 2,400 images before I came to the realization that the default settings on the scanner I was using were resulting in very low quality images. So I adjusted the settings (JPEG, 300 dpi) and began digitizing for the second time.

Once I completed the second round, I was confronted with a “now what” moment. I had access to them on my personal computer, but had no easy way of sharing them with family members or others who might be interested in viewing them. And so the letters, and their digitized counterparts, settled back into obscurity for another ten years.

In 2016, the Dallas Genealogical Society hosted Curt Witcher for our Summer Seminar. During one of his presentations, he mentioned the Allen County Public Library Military Heritage collection and their desire for the donation of collections like my father’s letters. It took a few more years, but I finally dropped the letters off at the library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, while attending the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference in August of 2018.

Curt explained that scanning and preparing the images would take some time to accomplish but said I could expect to see them online “in about a year”. That turned out to be a little optimistic.

The installation of a new computer system at the library created the first delay. A quality check following digitization revealed that the letters had been scanned incorrectly, resulting in another round of digitization (their 4th time). Then, the Covid-19 pandemic emerged with the ensuing facility closures and access restrictions. Finally, on May 3, 2021, the collection became available on the library website.