Archive for November 2025
June 30, 1944. From Bill to his sweetheart, Gloria
June 1944: Just 24 days after D-Day, while the world watches Europe, Bill writes home from the mess hall with bleary eyes, a cold he can’t shake, and a heart that aches for Gloria. In this relatable letter, Bill (stationed stateside) writes about laundry, homesickness, and “the kids” in uniform capturing a moment of war not on the front lines, but in the quiet, grinding routines that tested patience and pulled hearts homeward.
Read MoreApril 1919. From Poe to Sorority Sisters at Sigma Kappa House
When a young teacher put pen to paper to write her sorority sisters at Sigma Kappa House, I don’t think she had any idea her letter would survive more than a century!
What unfolds in these pages isn’t just gossip and friendship, it’s a woman fighting to protect her name in an era when a whisper [even a false one] could end a career. Threaded between stories of illness and small-town life, she captures what it meant to navigate loyalty, scandal, and survival as an educated woman in postwar America, when the old rules were crumbling and the new ones hadn’t yet been written.
[A note: I was surprised to learn in 1919-1920, approximately 283,000 women attended college in the US!]
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