love letters
By bjc
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inspired by digi dares to do this one...my inlaws had a very special loving relationship and a very romantic story of courtship..i had been wanting to scrap this for awhile so digidares, a layout by joyce schardt and the heritage crop got me to do this today.. my mil actually has all the letters she and my dfil sent to each other..when she comes for thanksgiving i am having her bring the first letter she ever sent to him...and maybe will add to this layout another page.. but for now i at least got this one about one of the greatest loves done...cc always appreciated...
journaling reads:
On September 19, 1941 Alice Regen sent a letter introducing herself to her first cousin Howard Cohlan. She lived in Brooklyn and he lived in Chicago, so they had never met. Alice was in 16 and a senior in high school. Howard was 20 and a senior at the University of Illinois. Alice wrote to Howard because she was thinking about the possibility of attending college in the Midwest.
Not only did Howard write back, but he invited her to come to his formal weekend. He thought it would be fun to pretend he has “imported a date” from New York and not to let anyone know that she was his cousin. She took the overnight train from New York to Chicago, then to Urbana (no plane travel in those days) and as prearranged she had a white corsage and a red ribbon attached to her jacket so he would know who to greet and hug.
By the time the weekend was over Alice went home with Howard’s fraternity pinned to her bra, so her parents wouldn’t know that the cousins had fallen in love at first sight.
They wrote many letters to each other throughout their courtship and while Howard was stationed in Hawaii during WWII. They were married on September 19, 1943 after a romantic courtship. Their love for each other remained constant and strong through sixty- six years of marriage. Each of them devoted to each other.
As a lover of family history, I took on the project of organizing all of their letters as a gift to them. They are preserved in special sleeves in several notebooks. It was only when organizing them that we all realized that the first letter was dated September 19 and that their wedding date was September 19. Coincidence? Or a special sign?
(note: some of this is an excerpt from the eulogy Alice gave at Howard’s funeral)
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