Pen Pals? Did you ever have one/know of one? (before internet)

12 years ago

The thread on the best gifts reminded me of another special person in my life. When I was 12 my English teacher traded names of his students with another teacher who was teaching English in Micronesia. I was given the name of a girl who lived on one of the small islands, her father was the chief in her village. She could write in our language but could not speak it. She wrote of their lives, hunger, religious beliefs, death, and how proud they were of each other. We wrote for 10 years, even past the time when she had to drop out of school to take care of her mother and 8 siblings. Eventually we stopped contact when she could no longer remember english. And then last year while doing a search on the internet, I came across a book that was a collection of letters that her teacher wrote to her own parents. I was able to track down the teacher and just made contact again with my pen-pal. We communicate through her cousin who is a midwife and is able to use the computer at the hospital.

My father-in-law grew up on the east coast and wrote in their church bulletin that he was looking for pen-pals. The bulletin was distributed across the U.S. He was only 12. He received so many replies and wrote to several girls for quite a while. Eventually, he went into Navy and decided to write to the one he had become fond of and also lived farthest away. He spent a few years at war and continued to write. Seven years later when his ship docked on the west coast, he stopped in to see (and surprise) her at the bank where she worked. The rest is history. Our family still has his first letter and picture he sent, a cute little 12 year old boy.

Any pen pals here or know of any stories to share?

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Comments (7)

IdaClaire
12 years ago
What fascinating stories, natesgram! What a wonderful thing to reconnect with your pen-pal from Micronesia after so many years. That's quite a gift! And what a sweet, sweet story about your father-in-law and how he met the love of his life. :-)

My mother really inspired my interest in pen-pals. She had a pen-pal when she was a young girl in the 40s - a girl her own age who lived in Scotland. Mom saved several things that the girl had sent her, and over the years as I was growing up, I used to love to dig out those items and dream about a little girl from long ago and far away.

I had my first pen-pal when I was a pre-teen. Her name was Barbara and she was an Italian beauty who lived in New Jersey. She was extremely boy crazy, and quite precocious for an 11 or 12-year old, and I remember being somewhat "scandalized" by her letters in which she told me of kissing (and petting with) boys. Shocking! ;-)

When I was an older teenager I briefly had a young man as a pen-pal. His name was Christopher and he lived in England, and was very handsome. I definitely had a crush, but I also had a boyfriend who was jealous of my long-distance letter writing, so I stopped communicating with Christopher. I've wondered a few times over the years whatever happened to him.

Thanks to magazines such as Country Decorating Ideas and Country Almanac, I've had quite a few pen-pals, several that I grew very close to throughout the years, even meeting in person and developing a relationship with their families as well. I reconnected with several of them on Facebook (but I no longer have an account there, so have kinda lost track of them again). Back in the early 90s, I probably had 5 or 6 very active pen-pal relationships with women who, like me, had a passion for decorating, collecting, and homemaking. We regularly sent each other "swap boxes" of goodies that we either handcrafted or picked up for one another in various antique shops or even at yard sales, and that was so much fun. Looking back to that time in my life, I wasn't working - I was a full-time homemaker - and the letter writing definitely filled a void and made my days at home more interesting. I still can't quite believe all of those pages and pages that I hand wrote! I just wrote a brief thank-you note to a work contact, and my handwriting has become just atrocious throughout the years. I know it wasn't this bad when I was regularly writing to my pen-pals!

Fun topic! It made me stop and remember some really neat people from my past.
IdaClaire
12 years ago
Oh dear. While remembering my pen-pals from the past, I did an internet search for one of them, a lovely woman who was confined to a wheelchair with MS, and found an obituary. She passed away in August of last year. I had no idea ... Wow.
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nancybee_2010
12 years ago
I had one. Her name was Delia, and she lived in Manchester, England. I remember she once sent me a penny, and I was so surprised at how much bigger it was than ours are. (I was in grade school).

Thanks for bringing back memories that I haven't thought of for years, natesgram.
terezosa / terriks
12 years ago
I had one in Bath, England, and oddly, she had the same last name as my mother's maiden name, which is pretty unusual. I remember that she was very into the Bay City Rollers. I've tried to find her on Facebook, to no avail.
gsciencechick
12 years ago
Back when I was about 10 or 12 at a family wedding I met a cousin of a cousin who was visiting from Scotland. We wrote for several years, but that was pretty much it.
ummm
12 years ago
Yes I had a few... in Korea, Japan, Macau, Germany and Holland I think. Lost touch with all of them know. Every so often I wonder what happened to them! This is all before internet days...
rucnmom
12 years ago
I had a penpal moment last week in my class. One of my students received a letter from Phillipe, a boy from France. All the kids crowded around to see the letter -- written in beautiful script with a fountain pen -- and a postcard from his city. It was so sweet to see 15 year olds who communicate electronically constantly to be genuinely interested in real mail!

Pen Pals? Did you ever have one/know of one? (before internet)

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IdaClaire

IdaClaire

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