thedrifter
06-01-05, 08:39 AM
By John Wilkens
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 30, 2005
A stack of 60-year-old letters tied together with red ribbon sat on the coffee table in Norma Kipp Avendano's Clairemont home. She picked them up. "These," she told Andrew Carroll, "are sacred."
Carroll nodded. More than probably anybody else on the planet, he understands.
For the past seven years, Carroll has been on a mission to save war letters, the heartfelt and often heartbreaking missives that breathe life into the history of America's military entanglements.
He has collected about 75,000 of them, correspondence from every war in the nation's history. His work has fueled museum exhibits, TV shows and two books: "War Letters," which came out in 2001 and was a best seller, and the newly released "Behind the Lines."
"War letters provide the perspective of real people who witness events firsthand," Carroll said. "They have immediacy and drama and reach us in ways that no history book can."
This Memorial Day weekend finds the Washington, D.C., resident in the early stages of a 50-state tour touting the importance of war letters and urging people to preserve their slices of history.
The tour brought him to San Diego recently, and he went to visit Avendano. Her story, featured in the new book, is one of Carroll's favorites. It speaks to the unique pull of letters, he said, and to the heightened emotions of wartime – to the way people reach for one another when life hangs in the balance.
Norma was a 16-year-old girl living in Georgia in 1943. Her aunt asked her to send a letter to Harry Kipp, a 41-year-old Marine captain from Minnesota who was fighting in the Pacific. Norma and Harry had never met.
They wrote regularly for nearly two years. She thought he was a little forward at first, maybe just handing her a line. But the more they wrote the more they shared, and they fell in love.
He proposed in a letter. "Would you tell me frankly, honestly, if you would marry me when I come home, should you find that you could care for me?"
They had never spoken on the phone. She had never seen a picture of him. But she said yes. "I want more than anything in the world to be your wife," she wrote back.
Harry was involved in fierce, island-hopping battles, including Okinawa. He tried to comfort Norma in his letters. "I'm not afraid because I am taking you along, and everything I do will be right because you are with me."
Sitting on the couch in her home, Norma pulled the letters close to her chest and sighed. "He wooed me with the poetry of his writing," she told Carroll. "He really stole my heart."
Carroll's hunger for other people's letters began when he lost his own. A house fire in 1990 consumed everything.
"There was nothing valuable or historically significant in my letters," he said. "But they were something I could never replace."
He was a student at Columbia University at the time, and he began to notice how often he would see snippets of famous letters in his reading assignments. An idea took hold.
In 1997, he published "Letters of a Nation," which told much of America's history through correspondence. There were letters about slavery and exploration and, yes, war.
The book was a best seller. He then started the Legacy Project to encourage people to preserve letters, especially war letters. World War II veterans, he knew, were dying at a rate of about 1,000 a day and taking their stories with them.
On a whim, he asked "Dear Abby" to publicize the project. She did, in a column that ran in newspapers all over the country on Veterans Day in 1998.
"Abby warned me, but I didn't really expect the response I got," Carroll said. His mailbox was flooded. He's still parting the waters.
There are letters from men who knew they were going to die, and did. There are "Dear John" letters from women breaking up with soldiers. There are letters from civilians begging for relatives to come rescue them from daily bombings.
And there are letters from brothers who fought on opposite sides of the Civil War, letters written in code, and letters about watching friends die in distant, lonely places.
Some of the letters are angry, some are sad, some are funny. "The letters aren't just about loss and grief," Carroll said. "They speak of resiliency, compassion, faith, determination. They really are inspiring."
Carroll, 35, has the bearded, bespectacled, perpetually tired air of a young college professor neck-deep in research. For his newest book, he flew all over the world to track down letters. "The more I do this," he said, "the more passionate I get about it."
He said he is regularly surprised at how personal and intimate much of the correspondence is. But whenever he calls to make sure it's OK to use a letter, in his books or on his Web site (www.warletters.com), people invariably say yes.
"When I talk to people, they all say that they want the younger generations to see all the ramifications of war, to understand what war is, what it does – the impact on individuals, families, whole nations," Carroll said.
"They are not pacifists. They believe there is evil in the world – they've seen it – and sometimes war is the only response. But something they all say is they don't want war to be romanticized. There is a cost."
When Norma Kipp Avendano saw the item in "Dear Abby," she wasn't sure about sharing Harry's letters. Three months later, she sent Carroll a note along with copies of the correspondence.
"These letters are over 50 years old," she wrote, "and are still my greatest treasure."
Harry survived the war. When it ended, he came home to get Norma.
He landed in California and they talked for the first time on the phone Sept. 22, 1945. After he hung up, he immediately sent her another letter. "The sound of your voice went straight to my heart," he wrote.
Carroll said he tells Harry and Norma's story wherever he goes. It's one of the best example of the power of letters, he said.
"People have a hard time believing the story. Falling in love, agreeing to marry before ever talking, let alone meeting? Everybody assumes they called it off."
They didn't. They were married a week after they first laid eyes on each other. They settled in San Diego and raised two children and stayed together almost 20 years, until cancer took Harry.
Norma married again. "But Tony (Avendano) knew when he married me that he was really marrying Norma and Harry," she said. He's since died, too.
She lives in the same Clairemont home that she and Harry bought in 1955. The bookcases that he built still line the hall. His portrait hangs above the mantel in the den.
"His only fear was that I wouldn't wait for him," she told Carroll.
Carroll's fear is that people like Norma won't save their letters. When he talks to those in the military, most of them say they use e-mail. And e-mail, he said, too often disappears with the touch of a delete key.
"Behind the Lines" includes some e-mail from the war in Iraq – one missive from a local Marine, Lt. Col. David Bellon, describe U.S. forces as they prepared to assault Fallujah in November – but Carroll wonders whether decades from now there will be many firsthand accounts of riding a Humvee through Baghdad or of manning a checkpoint.
"When we lose our letters," he said, "we lose a little of ourselves."
Ellie
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 30, 2005
A stack of 60-year-old letters tied together with red ribbon sat on the coffee table in Norma Kipp Avendano's Clairemont home. She picked them up. "These," she told Andrew Carroll, "are sacred."
Carroll nodded. More than probably anybody else on the planet, he understands.
For the past seven years, Carroll has been on a mission to save war letters, the heartfelt and often heartbreaking missives that breathe life into the history of America's military entanglements.
He has collected about 75,000 of them, correspondence from every war in the nation's history. His work has fueled museum exhibits, TV shows and two books: "War Letters," which came out in 2001 and was a best seller, and the newly released "Behind the Lines."
"War letters provide the perspective of real people who witness events firsthand," Carroll said. "They have immediacy and drama and reach us in ways that no history book can."
This Memorial Day weekend finds the Washington, D.C., resident in the early stages of a 50-state tour touting the importance of war letters and urging people to preserve their slices of history.
The tour brought him to San Diego recently, and he went to visit Avendano. Her story, featured in the new book, is one of Carroll's favorites. It speaks to the unique pull of letters, he said, and to the heightened emotions of wartime – to the way people reach for one another when life hangs in the balance.
Norma was a 16-year-old girl living in Georgia in 1943. Her aunt asked her to send a letter to Harry Kipp, a 41-year-old Marine captain from Minnesota who was fighting in the Pacific. Norma and Harry had never met.
They wrote regularly for nearly two years. She thought he was a little forward at first, maybe just handing her a line. But the more they wrote the more they shared, and they fell in love.
He proposed in a letter. "Would you tell me frankly, honestly, if you would marry me when I come home, should you find that you could care for me?"
They had never spoken on the phone. She had never seen a picture of him. But she said yes. "I want more than anything in the world to be your wife," she wrote back.
Harry was involved in fierce, island-hopping battles, including Okinawa. He tried to comfort Norma in his letters. "I'm not afraid because I am taking you along, and everything I do will be right because you are with me."
Sitting on the couch in her home, Norma pulled the letters close to her chest and sighed. "He wooed me with the poetry of his writing," she told Carroll. "He really stole my heart."
Carroll's hunger for other people's letters began when he lost his own. A house fire in 1990 consumed everything.
"There was nothing valuable or historically significant in my letters," he said. "But they were something I could never replace."
He was a student at Columbia University at the time, and he began to notice how often he would see snippets of famous letters in his reading assignments. An idea took hold.
In 1997, he published "Letters of a Nation," which told much of America's history through correspondence. There were letters about slavery and exploration and, yes, war.
The book was a best seller. He then started the Legacy Project to encourage people to preserve letters, especially war letters. World War II veterans, he knew, were dying at a rate of about 1,000 a day and taking their stories with them.
On a whim, he asked "Dear Abby" to publicize the project. She did, in a column that ran in newspapers all over the country on Veterans Day in 1998.
"Abby warned me, but I didn't really expect the response I got," Carroll said. His mailbox was flooded. He's still parting the waters.
There are letters from men who knew they were going to die, and did. There are "Dear John" letters from women breaking up with soldiers. There are letters from civilians begging for relatives to come rescue them from daily bombings.
And there are letters from brothers who fought on opposite sides of the Civil War, letters written in code, and letters about watching friends die in distant, lonely places.
Some of the letters are angry, some are sad, some are funny. "The letters aren't just about loss and grief," Carroll said. "They speak of resiliency, compassion, faith, determination. They really are inspiring."
Carroll, 35, has the bearded, bespectacled, perpetually tired air of a young college professor neck-deep in research. For his newest book, he flew all over the world to track down letters. "The more I do this," he said, "the more passionate I get about it."
He said he is regularly surprised at how personal and intimate much of the correspondence is. But whenever he calls to make sure it's OK to use a letter, in his books or on his Web site (www.warletters.com), people invariably say yes.
"When I talk to people, they all say that they want the younger generations to see all the ramifications of war, to understand what war is, what it does – the impact on individuals, families, whole nations," Carroll said.
"They are not pacifists. They believe there is evil in the world – they've seen it – and sometimes war is the only response. But something they all say is they don't want war to be romanticized. There is a cost."
When Norma Kipp Avendano saw the item in "Dear Abby," she wasn't sure about sharing Harry's letters. Three months later, she sent Carroll a note along with copies of the correspondence.
"These letters are over 50 years old," she wrote, "and are still my greatest treasure."
Harry survived the war. When it ended, he came home to get Norma.
He landed in California and they talked for the first time on the phone Sept. 22, 1945. After he hung up, he immediately sent her another letter. "The sound of your voice went straight to my heart," he wrote.
Carroll said he tells Harry and Norma's story wherever he goes. It's one of the best example of the power of letters, he said.
"People have a hard time believing the story. Falling in love, agreeing to marry before ever talking, let alone meeting? Everybody assumes they called it off."
They didn't. They were married a week after they first laid eyes on each other. They settled in San Diego and raised two children and stayed together almost 20 years, until cancer took Harry.
Norma married again. "But Tony (Avendano) knew when he married me that he was really marrying Norma and Harry," she said. He's since died, too.
She lives in the same Clairemont home that she and Harry bought in 1955. The bookcases that he built still line the hall. His portrait hangs above the mantel in the den.
"His only fear was that I wouldn't wait for him," she told Carroll.
Carroll's fear is that people like Norma won't save their letters. When he talks to those in the military, most of them say they use e-mail. And e-mail, he said, too often disappears with the touch of a delete key.
"Behind the Lines" includes some e-mail from the war in Iraq – one missive from a local Marine, Lt. Col. David Bellon, describe U.S. forces as they prepared to assault Fallujah in November – but Carroll wonders whether decades from now there will be many firsthand accounts of riding a Humvee through Baghdad or of manning a checkpoint.
"When we lose our letters," he said, "we lose a little of ourselves."
Ellie