As has been pointed out several times in this blog, Elmer did not save many of the letters he received during the war. So far as I can tell none of the letters written by his parents have survived, nor did virtually any of the letters written by his girlfriends or pals in the service. Elmer usually destroyed them after a certain period of time, in part because he had very limited storage space to keep hundreds of letters filed away for future preservation. Of course, I would have loved it if he would have bundled them up in a box and mailed them to his parents, but what can you do?
Anyway, the only collection of letters I have that were written to him by other people were penned by Rose Schmid, my grandmother. Grandpa did not save a lot of these letters, either: only a few exist from 1944 (I have many more from 1945), and these were filed by month in labeled envelopes later one, probably because grandpa threw out the original envelopes. The first of these letters is dated May 15, 1944.
Like with my Elmer’s letters to Rose I will mostly integrate Rose’s letters to Elmer into the blog narrative. But I plan on spending a lot more time researching her life, her job, and her background, and then integrating these topics fully into the book. Yet this is going to be much more challenging that my research on Elmer, aided as it is by hundreds of letters, an oral interview, conversations with my father and uncle, and the privilege of knowing my grandpa for nearly 37 years before he passed away. By contrast, my grandmother Rose passed away in 1979, less than two years before I was born.
I never did hear a lot about my grandmother growing up. My mom never met her, and my dad isn’t exactly the loquacious type. Meanwhile, my grandpa remarried not too long after Rose’s death, and the policy when I was a kid was that his wife was to be called “Grandma Margaret,” and Rose “Grandma Rose.” But Margaret had grandchildren of her own, and of my maternal grandmother’s 19 grandkids my brother and I were the babies, so we always felt like we received extra-special attention despite her living nearly 600 miles away.
I’ve always been curious about Grandma Rose, though, and while growing up I always felt she was in some way looking after me and my brother. I heard that she had a wicked sense of humor, loved Johnny Cash, and called her beef stew recipe “Cowboy Stew” in an attempt to get my dad and uncle to eat it (my mother always used that name as well, though I suspect my own Frozen-obsessed daughter will insist on something like “Princess Stew” instead).
Needless to say, I am excited to start reading her letters, because in a way this will be my opportunity to get to know her. Which is fantastic, because, honestly, she seemed pretty cool.
