For more than seventy years, a tattered box tied with lace ribbon, yellowed with age, had been tucked away, untouched and unknown to anyone but the long-deceased recipient and owner of that box ~ my mother.
As I carefully opened the box, I discovered not just a precious few, but over 70 letters lovingly tucked away, carefully preserved, as if waiting patiently for me to find them and liberate the inner most feelings of a young soldier going off to fight in the Korean War, ultimately ending up on the front lines at Heartbreak Ridge. More than its historic value and firsthand documentation of events that are today taught in history books, these letters were, to me, of greater personal value-documenting my parents' courtship and giving me the much needed insight into the heart and mind of a man I never really knew - my father.
Hunting down an aged family photo album that I remembered seeing as a child, I found the pictures that had been contained with the letters and corroborated the geographical landscape and passage of time the letters traversed. I was able to put the actual photographs with the letters and envelopes they'd been entrusted with.
The story does not end with my father's final letter. I hope you will be as profoundly affected by the letters as I was, all the way to the final chapter-a journey which took me decades and a lifetime to fully understand.
