Dear folks,
We've been fooling around all day waiting for the fog to lift so we can go on the firing range. It is now nearly 3 P.M. so I guess we're not going. Had a nice letter from Lynn yesterday. She is back at work again. I wrote two letters – no three letters – today, one long one to Earle so you get by on a card. Got your letter safely and will answer soon. Sorry our connection was poor last Sunday but was glad to talk anyhow. The call was only $.95. I am feeling well. Have been doing lots of hiking to the rifle range about 3 ½ miles from camp yesterday. We went out and back twice with no serious results. Our platoon has been working as telephone orderlies on the range but tomorrow we start firing. I am told I am not to fire because of being ill for 2 weeks during practice, but I don't know for sure. Anything happens.
Love, Van
ce
[Here's a photo of my dad's sister, Lynn, taken in Portland in 1944. Her real name was Myrtle Irene. At some point she decided to be Lynn, and I always called her "Aunt Lynn." Some of the family always called her Myrtle, and then in later life she decided to be "Myrtle" again. Well, it was too late for me. I still call her "Aunt Lynn."
Aunt Lynn was born about 1894 and graduated from Lewiston High School. Then she went to Portland where she worked for years as a photographer's assistant and photo re-toucher. During World War II, she was employed by the Kaiser shipyard as an office worker. She never married. During the late 1940s she came back to the farm and was a companion to her mother, Ina, until her passing. Aunt Lynn passed away December 28, 1971, at the nursing home in Orofino. KW]
3 comments:
Where in Portland? Is this her house? Does it look to you like there is something hovering above her head?
Do you know how she was able to attend high school in Lewiston? Did she stay with relatives?
On the back of the photo it says: summer 1944; 722 Jessup St., Portland Ore. She lived in the homes of others as a roomer or border. The "something hovering above her head" is the ornament on her hat (those could be quite outlandish. There's also the roofline as it comes out from the house over the windows.
I have such sympathy for Aunt Lynn. She carried her own weight in service to others but had no resources in the end. She worked for little more than her room and board. She didn't accumulate much by way of personal effects and never had a real home except the farm.
I don't know why she attended high school in Lewiston instead of Orofino. I discovered her picture in an LHS annual on the farm. I'll look that up when I can and write about her again. When I know the date she was enrolled, I can better guess the circumstances.
Aunt Lynn was attractive, intelligent, energetic, capable, industrious, artistic, socially inclined, but she lived in an age when unmarried women did not find real fulfillment in society. At least, I don't think she did. But -- we have her to thank for putting together the family history.
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