Friday, June 25, 1999
Words of love
Readers share letters of affection they will savor all their lives
BY CINDY KRANZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Lisa Feistritzer keeps love letters from her husband bound with a red satin ribbon in a shoe box. Those precious letters were their only link while they served in Operation Desert Storm.
Among Sandra Maly's collection of love letters from her husband, one of the most touching is a note she received after he died last December.
Love letters will help Karen Smith make it through the long days until July 4, when her husband returns from peacekeeping duties on the Sinai Peninsula.
While love letters have given way to love e-mail and phone calls, those who send and receive them say they are the glue that seals their relationship. They are tangible expressions of love and something that can be tucked away to rekindle fond memories another day.
A recent movie, The Love Letter, has brought love letters into a spotlight. So, the Enquirer asked readers to share their love letter stories. Here are some of them:
Military secrets
Lisa Smith and Joe Feistritzer were army lieutenants stationed in Germany when they met in September 1990. They quickly became inseparable. In late November, he received orders to deploy to Saudi Arabia.
“We had just met each other, and suddenly we were going to be separated,” she said. “The future was very uncertain. The U.S. was deploying thousands of troops to Saudi, and it appeared that Iraq was prepared for a long war.
“Three weeks after Joe left, my unit deployed to Israel, and I patiently waited each day for mail call. I had written Joe every day since the day he left, and I anxiously awaited a letter letting me know where he was and how he as doing.”
Unfortunately, the mail system was slow, and she waited almost two months for her first letter from Joe. She worried about him. Meanwhile, he was frustrated because he didn't know where she was.
“When the letters finally began to arrive, I was deeply touched by the time and effort he put into writing each letter,” she said. “He painstakingly detailed every day to me and often told me how he missed me terribly and thought about me every day. Since we had only been dating a few months before this time, I was seeing a side of Joe that was very sincere and touching.
“He also talked of our future together and how he hoped we would soon be getting home to each other. He constantly reminded me of all the special times we had shared before the deployment and assured me there would be many more.”
In March 1991, she wrote Joe a letter and asked him if he ever thought about marrying her. About two weeks after she returned to Germany from Israel, he called from Kuwait and asked her to marry him. They were married July 30, 1991, in Basel, Switzerland.
Now, the Pierce Township couple has a 3-year-old son and a baby on the way in December. Lisa, 34, is a law student and Joe, 38 is in operations management for a manufacturing company. They still leave quick love notes for each other, but they don't compare to the letters.
“My fond memories of his wonderful love letters are safely stored in a special box in my hall closet,” she said. “I occasionally take those letters out and reread them to remind me of how special the man I married really is to me.”
The last love letter
For 25 years, Sandra Maly of Delhi Township received love letters from her husband, Al. Some simply said, “I love you.” Others went into great detail.
“I knew he loved me no matter what we went through,” she said. “There were times we couldn't be together. He traveled a lot in his business. He'd send me a letter on a scrap of paper from a hotel room.”
But, the last one, which she received after his death on Dec. 19, 1998 is one of the most special. Mr. Maly, 77, who was superintendent of agencies for Western-Southern Life, died of emphysema and congestive heart failure. The Malys were married 20 years.
Two years ago, he had given a date book to a dear friend of theirs whom he teased about being so busy. He wrote the note under Dec. 31, 1996. It said:
“Well Pal —
Here it is — the last day of 1996.
“Did we make it? I'm sure you did! Did I?
If I did, please call and wish me Happy New Year — if not please call Sandy and remind her one last time how much I loved her.
I loved her more than anything or anyone in the world!
See Ya.”
The friend called him to wish him a Happy New Year, but hung onto the book until he died. She gave it to Mrs. Maly last New Year's Day.
“I cried a lot because he had only been dead a few days,” Mrs. Maly recalled. “It just touched my heart and soul. It was one more thing he did. He was always that way. He was very, very much a romantic.”
Mrs. Maly, 59, a retired Cincinnati Bell service representative, keeps all of her love letters in a wooden box in her cedar chest. The date book was added to the collection. “He will always be with me through his letters, which I shall always have.”
You've got lunch and mail About a year ago, Roxanne Haag wrote her husband, Michael, a love letter and slipped it into his lunch box just before he left for work.She thought it would be romantic since he'd be alone at his job site and would have total privacy to read the letter. He was working the midnight to 7 a.m. shift as an emulsion operator at Marathon-Ashland Petroleum in North Bend.
“It was quite long, very emotion-filled, from the heart, telling him exactly what and how I felt about him,” the Guilford, Ind., woman said. “Then, instead of going to sleep that night, I stayed awake, anticipating a phone call I knew would come.”
Sure enough, the phone rang in the middle of the night. He called to tell her how much that letter meant to him and how much he loved her, too. What a wonderful surprise he had with lunch.
Michael, 42, and Roxanne, 34, have been married nine years. They have two boys, ages 10 and 7. They have sent love letters before and since they were married, but the lunch box letter was the most unique.
“I hope to do that again sometime, although now he works the day shift, surrounded by co-workers, so it will be more difficult, but I will find a way, and when he least expects it, as he opens his lunch box ...”
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Letters from abroad
Helen Johnson was pregnant when her husband, Charles, was sent to Calcutta with the Air Force during World War II. They relied on letters to stay in touch.
“I was amazed at how eloquent he was,” Mrs. Johnson said. “You lived for the letters that came every day. That was your only contact. You couldn't call. It was a month before he knew he had a child.”
One special letter was written June 12, 1944. An excerpt:
“Dear Punkin —
Here it is June the 12th a day that I will remember for quite a while. This is the very day a year ago that I soloed my first airplane. It was a very eventful day then. Now it doesn't seem nearly so important.
Darling, there are so many more important things in this life than that. For example the day when I see you again will be almost as important to me as the day that I married you. Sometimes I believe it will be more important because I love you so much more than I did then. I don't know how that is possible but it is true.
... Gee I wish that I could be there for the big moment. I know that there is nothing that I could do but just the fact that I was there when our first child arrived would be such a great satisfaction to me. I hope that it would be at least a comfort to you ...
Your adoring husband,
Charles
Their son was born Oct. 22, 1944. “He didn't see him until he was 17 months old,” she said. “There were a lot of us war widows.”
The Johnsonsof Hyde Park, married 58 years, have two more children. He is 82 and retired as director of maintenance for the Cincinnati Board of Education. She is 81 and a retired art teacher from the Baker-Hunt Foundation in Covington.
She keeps love letters from her husband in a box in the basement. Mr. Johnson doesn't send love letters anymore.
“He doesn't need to,” his wife said. “I'm just pleased he's here with me.”
Until we meet again
On March 26, 1979, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Treaty of Peace, reaffirming the regional treaty established by the Camp David accord. At that time, Karen Huth was 11 and living in Okeana. Her future husband, Allen Smith, was 12 and living in Deer Park.
“Twenty years later, the Treaty of Peace gave occasion for our love letters,” Mrs. Smith said.
Mr. Smith, 33, serves in the U.S. military and since Jan. 10 has been stationed with an international peacekeeping force on the southern-most tip of the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian territory at the mouth of the Suez Canal. Since then, the couple have exchanged daily love letters.
“I cannot express in regular language, though poetry comes close, what the letters mean to me,” the 31-year-old woman said. “I can tell you they are the only tangible things I have that connect me to my husband while he is away.
“I can say I know where our mailman parks his delivery truck, how long it takes him to walk to our mailbox, and that receiving or not receiving a letter can have a profound effect on my mood.”
The Smiths, married a year and three months, lived in East Walnut Hills until moving last August to Fort Drum in New York, where he's stationed in the Army. She's a free-lance writer and former teacher.
The couple will be reunited July 4. Though the separation is difficult, the letters have drawn them closer. “We share thoughts in our letters that we may not express so frequently when in person,” she said.
“Have we perfected the art of love letter writing? If the purpose of such a letter is to make the recipient feel as if he or she is the most important person in the world, then I would say we have. Saying "I love you' is never redundant.”
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