This guest column is from my friend Todd Thompson, who is a gifted writer and communicator. In response to my request for love stories, Todd send me this amazing account.
My Grandma Thompson was born on an Iowa farm in 1900. In the early 1920′s she was a teacher and high school principal. While a teacher she formed some strong friendships with three of her fellow teachers. Glynda, Mack, Bess, and my Grandma Bernice became great friends.
During that time my Grandfather began to pursue a relationship with my Grandmother. He knew a good thing when he saw it. But Grandma didn’t make it easy for him. He had to court her with a great deal of persistence before she finally said “yes”. In a letter she wrote to my cousin describing the events leading up to their marriage, Grandma said, “I once told your Grandfather that it would be a cold day before I married him. And it was. 30 below zero on Christmas Eve 1924.”
After a couple years, Grandma left teaching to become a full-time farm wife. Glynda, Mack, and Bess also headed off in different directions. Before they parted company, however, they decided to keep in touch by way of a “round robin” letter. In our age of high speed electronic mail, the round robin letter is a tool of an era gone by. Here’s how it worked. The first person would write their letter and forward it to the next person who would read the one in the envelope, add their own letter and forward it on. When the letter went full circle, you’d read all the other letters, pull out your old one, write your new one, and send it on.
Grandma and her friends made a promise to each other that they would keep this letter going no matter where they ended up. My Grandma stayed in Iowa after she married. Her friends moved away. Glynda went to California where she married an architect. Mack moved to Connecticut where she married her businessman husband. Bess moved to northern Minnesota where her husband taught school and the two of them operated a lakeside resort.
I’m sure that anyone who heard these girls talk about their promise to keep a round robin letter going chalked it up to good intentions. It would have been an easy emotional promise to make. Much harder to follow through for a year, let alone longer.
By her own admission, Grandma wishes she had kept all the letters she wrote. Early on she didn’t think they were anything but old news when she pulled them out of the round robin envelope. She always wished she had kept all of them and so do I. But we treasure the ones we have. The earliest one in our possession was written in pencil from a hospital bed in 1929. My Grandparents were living in Minneapolis at the time. A drunk driver in a milk truck ran a stop sign and broadsided them on May 27, 1929. Grandma spent the next seven months in the Anker Hospital.
The letters faithfully made the rounds, sometimes slowly during their child raising years, and sometimes quickly after the children flew the nest. These girls kept their promise to write. The letters made the rounds for over 66 years until my Grandmother passed away in 1990. The remaining three friends kept the letters going until finally there was only one living. Glynda was the last of the four friends to go to heaven, passing on at the age of 100.
To build life-long inner circle friendships, we must be a faithful friend. My Grandmother and her friends faithfully kept in touch over the miles and the years. The impact of these letters was obvious. It was a glue that strengthened their bond. The letters also kept their relationships fresh. I had opportunity to see my Grandmother reunite with her friends when they were in their 80′s and it was a delight to see. They were like school girls. Laughing and talking and reminiscing. I‘m absolutely convinced that without their faithfulness to write these letters, their friendships would have faded decades earlier.
These value of these letters has transcended their original purpose. My Grandma and her friends wrote the round robin letter as a way of staying connected. Yet for 66 years they set an example to friends and family. As a child I heard my Grandmother talk about her friends. I watched her face light up like a Christmas tree when that manila envelope came in the mail and I watched her sit on the couch and read the letters from her far away friends. She would sit and read them over and over, savoring them. A big chunk of what I learned about friendship I learned from my Grandmother’s example of faithfulness to her friends.
That’s something we don’t think much about but we should. There is a legacy of friendship that should be passed on to our children. When little Johnny and little Susie see their parents nurturing and developing solid inner circle friendships, it communicates that friends are a priority in life. When we model healthy friendships for our children, they learn valuable lessons about what the Bible means when it says we are to “encourage one another”, “pray for one another”, “comfort one another”, “bear one another’s burdens” and “forebear one another” “rejoice with one another”. In short, when we model healthy friendships for our children we are teaching them what it means to live in community with one another.
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Wow! What a wonderful story.
You know, sometimes I miss not having the internet; there was something so special about thinking about which words to put to paper, and the anticipation of checking the mailbox and reading what someone else has written, tucking that letter away in a special spot, and pulling it out later. Technology has in some ways made it easier to keep in touch, but harder to develop meaningful relationships. LOVED the story, thanks for sharing
I just read this amazing story for the third morning. I can really identify with the anticipation of each friend as they waited for the next letter. Because of an unforeseen illness, I was forced to retire from a very fulfilling job that I had loved for years. One of the highlights of my day was the mornings when the other workers there would smile and say “goodmorning” and at the end of that work day we would all talk about the day and say “see you tomorrow”. The words from a friend is so valuable. That is really more evident to me now as I find myself checking my e-mail 3, 4, and 5 times a day in hopes of hearing from a friend. I loved this story on so many levels but mainly because I could identify with the warm feeling that those friends must have felt.
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