Communicating With Home
June 6, 2016
When I started dating my wife in college, we were both in Mississippi, albeit in different parts of our home state. During summer vacation we communicated by letter since making a long distance call was so expensive. While cleaning out the attic this past Memorial Day, I found our numerous letters of courtship buried in a box. In reviewing these letters I started pondering the rapid evolution of communication.
A marathon of “war” movies played on Memorial Day last week in tribute to the sacrifice of our fallen heroes. Following the attic clean up, I watched a documentary about the West Point Class of 1967. It described the story of a group of twenty-two year olds destined for the Vietnam War at the heaviest time of fighting. One aspect of their story haunted me. The documentary chronicled how immediately after the graduation of the class, countless weddings occurred in West Point’s chapel. Some young men went through the rites of graduation and marriage on the same day. One young bride of 1967 was interviewed for the documentary, which was filmed in 2012. She had kept cassette recordings that she and her young husband had regularly sent back and forth during his time in Vietnam. The producers blended the husband’s conversation to his young bride into their story. He never came home but for thirty-five years she has kept the tapes.
I then watched a WWII movie, which included the ritual of “Mail Call” as marines on a remote South Pacific island received letters from home. In some cases, the news in the letters was months old. Every letter was much anticipated and carefully stored. In fact, the pictures accompanying today’s weekly are hand-painted envelopes from a WWII serviceman writing home to his loved one in Brooklyn. Each envelope depicted something important at the time of his writing.
The last movie of the day was a modern day war story out of the Middle East. Here were scenes of soldiers video-chatting with family members on a regular basis. In today’s world, a parent stationed overseas can interact frequently with their spouse, and can even “see” their children go off to school.
Today’s piece is really about the notion of how we choose to communicate with one another. The old fashioned ways seem to have more of a sense of permanence, as many people keep cards and letters for years. Other methods of communicating provide immediacy and as a result the content is rarely memorable. Maybe we should all be more careful in selecting the best form of communication for each purpose, and not fall into the trap of always choosing the quickest and easiest method to use.
Carl Gambrell
