April 9, 1943

Dear Dick,

It made me very happy to receive your letter and to know you are so close to Cleveland now. I also received your card some time ago, but couldn’t answer, because you didn’t put your return address on it. I wrote Walt and asked him what your address was, but my only reply was a letter telling me that he had found another girl whom he was going to ask to marry him.

But now, Dick, I’d like to first congratulate you on your joining the Air Corps. I think that is perfectly swell and you deserve something fine like that and I know you will make good and I’m hoping for the day when you are Lt. Knie. Barbara sure ought to be proud of you—bet she is! I hope your plans about marriage work out just as you and Barbara want them to, because you are sure two swell people—the very best there is.

And now to something I know must be a question in your mind and something which I have waited to tell you ever since last August when it all happened. Of course you know I refer to the breaking of Walt’s and my engagement. I don’t know how much he told you, but he broke the engagement by writing me a long letter explaining the fact that he was not sure that he loved me and that it would be better if I would forget I had ever met him and that we should call off our marriage which we had planned for September. He also said it would be best if I did not come to Conn. as we had planned in August. Well, now or ever can I find words to explain how I felt—all I can say is that I was completely crushed. After all the planning and just everything and then to have such a thing happen. I didn’t care about the humiliation of it at all—that was the smallest part of my hurt, but the real thing and this no one except now you know about if the fact that since they had hired someone else for my job at the station I almost lost this wonderful position, but God was certainly on my side when the day before the girl came in, it was found out that she was not very unsuited for the job, was not a very good worker and strictly not a person to have around and certainly wouldn’t fit in at our station. I will never forget that week of anxiety—it was just like hanging between life and death wondering if the people who had been consulted about the girl would reply in time so that our personnel manager could reject her before she came to work. And in the very last mail on the Friday that I was to leave a letter came to him that told him what he had wanted to know. I also will never forget how wonderful the people at the station were about this. They all hoped along with me that she would prove not suitable—I have never experienced such loyalty before—it just did my heart good to know what really grand people I am working with. The personnel manager did all he could to find out about her and he was going on his vacation the very next week and he just said word would have to come in before he went or he just wouldn’t know what to do, and he was so happy when he was able to tell me that “eleventh hour” news. Well, that is part of it Dick and I’m sure you can feel the rest.

After I heard from Walt telling me the engagement was off, I was so ill that I just had to take a week off to just rest and pull myself together. It was all such a great blow to me, to think that he had carried our romance so far, when he must have known his feelings before that and knew my plans for leaving the station had been made. I don’t know just what to think, but Dick, it seems to me he should have had some consideration and thought about what this all would mean to me and instead of that he just considered himself and wanted to be sure he just couldn’t go through with it before he finally told me. He stated that in so many words when he told me that he was not sure how he really felt about me and that for some months he had felt that way. Be instead of discussing the matter with me openly he just kept it to himself, made me unhappy by treating me strangely when I did come wall those miles to see him, and finally at the last possible moment, without even wanting to see me personally to tell me he says he no longer cares. He should have told me how he really felt== for surely he know I would understand. I always have been understanding and always try to be—I guess you know that Dick. But that is what happened. As for my job and my feeling well I haven’t told Walt or your Mom and Dad, but I want you to know about this.

Before Walt went to the Army he called me and told me that he would like to see me on his first furlough and that he still loved me as much as he ever did and wanted to see me so very much. He made me promise I would see him and I did promise. I also told me that I’d be glad to see him and that he should come to Cleveland. Well, he wrote to me from Chicago saying he had been sent to Fort Sheridan and wanted me to come up there on week-ends to see him. I didn’t write him right away because I was so very very busy right then at Christmas time and soon after that the Cleveland Stage Door Canteen opened and I was there almost every night working after work for about three weeks and was so busy. I really almost me myself coming and going from home—getting home usually after one o’clock in the morning, the canteen being open until twelve o’clock each night and then it taking me an hour to get home. So I really couldn’t get a little rest and write letters too. Well, Walt I guess felt that I had found someone else and was going steady or something like that and consequently me someone else in Milwaukee. Well, Dick, again when I read his letter telling he had met another girl, fallen in love with her and was going to ask her to marry him before he went over-seas, it was just the most awful thing I could ever imagine—I was completely crushed. It has hurt me so very much that I just haven’t even been able to write a reply to Walt even yet—I haven’t been able to think about it—certainly not put it into words. But your sweet letter, Dick, has helped so very much—you’ll never know. I ‘ve been able to tell you, in what is mere words, just how I feel.

Truthfully, I didn’t think for one minute that Walt would even try to find anything else—for he made me to believe that the Army was uppermost in his mind and nothing could take its place until after the war was won. I felt that if he did love me as much as he ever did he would come to Cleveland to see me and we could start all over as he had said he wanted to. Don’t you think, if he really loved me, he should have done that? I didn’t’ want the same thing to happen to us again by my going to see him in Chicago, and he just didn’t care enough to want to come to Cleveland to see me. If I thought for one minute that my going to Chicago would have saved our love, nothing would have kept me away. But I was so afraid it would start a feeling that wouldn’t last on Walt’s part. He loved me deeply when he came from Conn. To Ohio the first time—just after I met him and I wanted him so very much to come to Cleveland on his first furlough, but he just wouldn’t wait that long for me. I just didn’t know what to think, Dick. I wish you would help me. For some reason that is beyond explanation a first real great true love can never be forgotten, nor can it ever be substituted by something that we try to believe is the same thing. No matter how hard we try there is always that little something just beyond our reach that stays with us. And that is how I feel about Walt and how I am certain he still feels about me down deep. He has met someone and although he was and now he feels he is in love with her. No one since I have know Walt has ever impressed me as being a man I could marry. Every one has been very nice and might make a perfectly swell husband for someone else, even for me, -- but that old old feeling has always remained and there’s no getting away from it—ever…..

And after what I have gone through I feel sure that if Walt had even tried a little to have me back, there would have been no question.

As it is now, I don’t know what is going to happen. I hope that Walt won’t marry this girl and then spend a life of unhappiness, when our dreams were so perfect, just like a dream—a dream I shall never forget, nor will he, I know.

Dear Dick I hope you can help me and let me say again how very happy your letter has made me. I like you very much and I’m so glad to know you liked me so well. E did have fine times and I hope for old time’s sake we will someday see each other again. Your sweet letter brought tears to my eyes when I remembered how grand you always were to me. I shall always keep that corsage of pink carnations you had Mom give me when I left New London after my vacation last June. It is dry, now but as lovely as ever to me. I only wished I could have thanked you personally for them.

I hope you will write to me when you can always let me know where you are and how you are, and if there is ever anything you need or if I can help you in any way please do ask me for I want you to with all my heart, Dick.

And now before I close I’d like you to say hello to Mom and Dad for me when you write them and I do hope they are both in the best of health. Please give my love to Barbara and I hope she is doing real well at school. By the way your Aunt Helen sent me a birth announcement so now you have another little cousin. I sent her a gift , but as yet I haven’t heard from her. I’ll be she is very busy now.

Send my love to Mom and if you think it advisable remember me to Walt when you write him. Take good care of yourself, Dick, and I hope you are feeling fine and lots of luck at Bowling Green—and always….

Sincere love,

P.S. Please excuse my typing this letter, but I felt I could write it so much more like if I were talking to you. Bye now.