Other People's Love Letters_ 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See - Bill Shapiro [5]
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I think you know how much my life has changed
She was a summering legal intern, he was an attorney, and, yes, they met in the copy room. She was Xeroxing stacks of documents and he kept coming in to make tea. On his tenth trip for tea that morning he said “hi” and asked her to lunch; they started dating that day. The note was written at the end of her internship. They’ve been dating for three years.
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Mr. H Goldberg: Your letter on hand
Frieda, the daughter of a rabbi, lived in Toledo, Ohio. While visiting Springfield, she met Harry, a man in his mid-twenties, who owned a small mom-and-pop grocery store. Harry’s story was compelling: At sixteen, he had emigrated, by himself, from Poland to New York, where he worked in the sweatshops, and then from the sweatshops to Springfield. This note was written in response to one of his first letters to her. Their quick courtship played out entirely on paper—they never dated before they were married, when she moved to Springfield. They lived in a house attached to the grocery store (open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.), where they both worked. Frieda and Harry had three children and were married for fifty-eight years.
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I might marry you
Jacob and Phoebe have been friends since they were infants. Both are still single.
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Darling
In the mid-thirties, a traveling salesman (he specialized in jeans, boots, and Western gear) walked into a shop in Trinidad, Colorado, hoping to make a sale. When he saw a stunning young woman working at the counter, he asked her out for a Coke instead. They went on a couple of quick dates—including a boat ride on a pond where she plucked a small stone from the shore as a souvenir—before he got back on the road. He continued traveling and their courtship unfolded almost entirely by mail. They married in 1939 and remained madly in love until he died in 2001. When she died two years later, she was buried with the stone she had kept from that first boat ride.
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Reasons why I love Kay
Don and Kay were married for twenty-four years. Not long after this note was written—composed, as Don says, “as a gift”—Kay was killed in a highway car accident.
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Subj: (no subject)
This e-mail was written by the husband hours before he was going into surgery … just in case. He pulled through, and they recently celebrated their twenty-first anniversary.
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Hello, Cheryl. What’s happening?
Cheryl was sixteen, and living at home in Rhode Island. Ricky was in the Marine Corps stationed in Hawaii. Her brother, also in the Corps, also in Hawaii, suggested that Ricky become pen pals with his kid sister. And so they began writing back and forth … and back and forth. Over four months, she wrote him more than sixty letters; he wrote her more often—one a day until he was shipped home. (His very first letter is included here.) His home, as it turned out, was just thirty-five miles from where she lived. The first time they saw each other was when she picked him up at the airport. After dating for two and a half years, they were married in 1979. Every once in a while, she says, they still take out the letters—they’ve saved them all—and “laugh at how young we were.”
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Jane: Look, I’m incredibly confused.
The couple dated for two months.
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Subject: Hey babe
They connected on an Internet dating site and e-mailed for a month before meeting each other. This e-mail was written a few days before their first date: She picked him up at the train station and there he was, holding a rather large bouquet of flowers. It was, she says, love at first sight. They’ve been together for two years.
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