More Mail Bag matches
More Mail Bag matches
WE ASKED READERS to tell us about pen pals they found through the Monitor's Mail Bag column, which ran from 1929 to 1969. Here are excerpts from a few of your responses.
I recall two women I corresponded with through the Mail Bag. One lived in Wisconsin and the other in Oregon. Their letters meant a great deal to me because I lived on the outskirts of a Boston suburb with my husband and three small children and didn't get out much. My daily trips down the driveway to the mailbox were my connection with the "outside" world. Both women have since passed on, but I still think of them fondly for being my true pals, my pen pals.
T. Jewell Collins
Harrison, Maine
At the end of World War II, I found a Dutch pen pal who sounded really interesting. Her name was Corrie deVries and she lived in Alkmaar, Netherlands, where her father owned a small cafe. She told me about having enemy soldiers housed all around them. I was a southern California girl and only had read about such things. Her family sent us chocolate and a pair of wooden shoes, which I still have. We kept in touch until 1953, the year we each married. In 1969, when my husband and I were in Europe, we tried to look them up, but without success. Maybe some day...
Rahla Hall Lindsey
In the 1950s, my mother yearned to learn about other places in the world from the people who lived there. Through the Mail Bag column she came to know Mrs. Nemathy and her family in Hamburg, Germany. Mom practiced her college German, and Mrs. Nemathy practiced her English. Over the next two decades, both women corresponded about their everyday lives. Photos of the Nemathy family are scattered throughout my childhood albums. When my first husband was stationed in Europe in 1968, we traveled to Hamburg and spent three days with Mom's pen pal and her family. Although these two moms eventually lost touch, I still recall the delight each letter from Germany brought us.
Kaarin (Greene) Brown
Livermore, Calif.
• Send your Mail Bag story to earth@csmonitor.com or to Mail Bag – Home Forum, The Christian Science Monitor, 210 Massachusetts Ave., P02-30, Boston, MA 02115.
