You may recall that my sister and I found a package of letters from Mama’s high school boyfriend in her bottom drawer when we cleaned out her house. She had carefully saved these letters from Louis for over sixty years.

We put these letters and photos in plastic sleeves and arranged them in a notebook. We gave the notebook to Louis’s daughter and grandson. I kept copies of the letters and photos.

As fate would have it, Louis’s widow’s sister found a bag of old letters that my mother had written to Louis during the same time period. The aunt gave these letters to Louis’s daughter who gave them to my sister and me.

My sis and I put these in order in notebooks. Then we spent several days on the porch reading them outloud. They are a documentation of young love developing and then fading. My sis and I cried several times. The obstacles between them were insurmountable.

We collated his letters with her letters in the notebooks. Now their story is complete. We hope his daughter will come and experience Louis and Dottie’s story with us when we have it finished.

Louis and Dottie did not end up together, but their years of letter writing, 1949-1953, impacted both of their lives.

I will be writing more about this. That darn book keeps popping back into my life. Sigh.

FLOWER