My mother’s love letters from WW2 American soldier.

[angstinabaggyjumper]

During the latter part of WW2 my mother fell head over heels in love with an American soldier, a yank. From the sound of his letters the feeling was mutual and my mother kept all the letters he sent her from America and from France around the time of D Day. It makes emotional reading.
My question is what should I do with these letters now my mother is no longer with us and I have no one interested enough to safely leave them. Any ideas please?

angstinabaggyjumper - Unfortunately the situation is really that bad. I would never have thought it would turn out like this but it has and I have to deal with it. My parents would not want anything getting into the hands of certain folks and that includes family items which are over 200 years old, jewellery, medals, money or houses. I have that in one parent's own hand writing and the other parent made no mention of anyone other than me even on very official documents.

Pieces of history. Kids learn about the bombs and the battles but they forget that life was still going on for everyone. A history museum would be interested.

When my Nan died we found all of the letters she and my Grandad wrote too each other during the war whilst sorting out her things. My grandad was still with us but in very deep grief and he threw them away. Fortunately my mum retrieved them from the bin without him knowing and stashed them away. When he died last year she put the letters in with him and they were cremated. She had kept a bit of my Nans ashes back and she put them with a bit of my grandads and scattered them where they went on holiday after the war was over, so they and their letters floated out to sea together.

DeadButDelicious - I love your story about your grandparents' letters.

claraschu thank you for your kind words, yes she never fell out of love with him and never blamed him.

My tracking skills online are very basic but I have a hunch that B's wife is still alive which puts a whole new aspect on sharing the letters with his children.

wow, As family history buff, I love this type of thing. I would scan & transcribe them, and put some online.

I don't think there's any obligation to find his family. It's just something to consider. If his wife is still alive, if you give them to a museum or local archives you let them know once she's passed that they're there if they are interested.

Then it's up to them if they want to access them or not.

Yes it's just a bit disappointing though because when people mentioned I could contact his family it gave me hope that someone else might have a personal interest in them.

I'm sure they would but i can see that his wife being alive makes things a bit tricky.

But then I guess she must be pretty old by now she may be in a home of some kind.

Unless of course she was quite a bit younger than him.

The irony is that my DM was quite a bit younger than him but not his wife. I think she may well have been aware of my DM. I really should transcribe some of his last text to her and see what MNs think of it.

It's so sad to hear of so many stories being lost like this, but there does have to be a balance with what the person would have wanted to some degree - as I said in an earlier post though, maybe making copies would be a good idea while you decide what to do.

One of the saddest projects I worked on - although I ended up not working on it - was when an elderly man contacted me and asked me to write his book so that his family would be given it when it came time for his will to be read. He had some wonderful stories, and I think he just wanted them to have those forever and to choose what to do with them (a publisher would have jumped at the chance).

Sadly, he died before we ever had a chance to even start on the project, but he had actually told his family he was going to do it and they felt bereft in many ways. That still bothers me .

lljkk I might like to share some on line I think it would make good sad reading. But where?

Could you start your own blog?

My mum has some letters from my granddad to my nan during the war. My nan told my mum to burn them when she died. She didn't. They will probably come down to me.

I don’t know how to start my own blog but OMG what an idea and then other people could add theirs and all that emotion wouldn’t just be festering in some museum waiting for the light of day once in a while!

Oh, it's really easy - Wordpress is great for it!

I got someone to set my website up for me, but that's because I would have spent ages tinkering rather than getting on with work, but it's really easy for me to add blogs etc to it - if I can do it, anyone can . It looks really nice too, so it might be worth spending a little to get someone to do the initial design that you can then put more material on as and when you want to?

Blog = great idea.

It's very easy to start a blog - there are websites that specialise in free blog templates like Weebly.com. They do it all for you.

I'd transcribe them and upload them to the blog but still lodge the orignals with a museum or local archive.

@angstinabaggyjumper - a blog is exactly where i’ve shared some of my relative’s letters. Set one up; it’s a great way of giving the letters a measure of permanence. You could anonymise them if you preferred and even set them to “private” so only you can see them until you’re ready to share.

Please let us know the blog address when you've created it