Background for The letter box

My name is Jane Elizabeth Effinger-Corbus. I am the daughter of Norman W. Effinger and Velma Margaret "Babe" Kelser-Effinger-McFadden. I am the sister of Sue Ellen Effinger-Kali. Our family home was located on Route 162 in Medina County, Ohio.
Our parents bequeathed us much: Intelligence, relative good health, gentle dispositions, positive outlooks: the important stuff and very little in the way of material goods. There is a small material legacy left us by my Father however. it takes the form of letters. During the War Years 1943-1946 while my Father was in the Army, he and my Mother exchanged, almost daily, over 1000 letters. Part of my Mother's legacy to us is that she saved Dad's letters while hers were lost in the rugged conditions of war.
My sister and I knew of the letters of course. We heard war stories and grew up with foreign coins, Dad's dress hat and other bits of Army clothing, lots of photos, and Philippine souvenirs as playthings. I still use his army duffel for camping gear. But to my memory we never saw the letters. Mother kept them to herself.
Sometime around 1994 when my Mother was approaching 80, and dad had been gone for over 30 years, she informed my sister and I that she was recording the letters for us on cassette tape and we would each be given copies. When finished she had created 32 cassettes in her own voice reading Dad's war letters, editing where she saw fit. I asked her not to destroy the letters which, I think was her intention , and she asked me not to read them until after she was gone.
As Mother prepared to re-read and record the letters, she removed them from their envelopes, flattened them in all their various shapes and sizes and types of paper and stationery, and stacked them, in order by date, in a cardboard liquor box. The envelopes were thrown away. And that is how they came to me after her death in 2005.
I shuffled the box around for a while among my other saved papers and memorabilia. But what to do with all those letters?? My sister and I spoke of them occasionally. We live an impossible distance apart, she in Hawaii and Me in Medina, so our communication is mostly via e-mail. We now both knew from listening to our Mother's recordings, that the letters were more than just personal history. They were interesting and engaging and surprisingly my Father had been a very good writer.
I think my sister moved on an idea first. She began talking of writing a novel based on the letters. She teaches writing to seniors at Wiamea High School in Kauai and has been taking writing courses as part of her continuing education. During one of those courses she recently began writing a few chapters. What she has written is good and begins to fill in the big blank of Mother's responses to all those letters.
About the time my sister was following her muse, I decided the least I could do was organize the pile in the box. I knew the National Archives accepts all World War II related papers for study. Then I visualized the liquor box stored in an endless basement file in Washington DC, dank and musty. My Father's legacy deserves better.
Over the course of several months and with help I managed to insert all the pages in sheet protectors and file them in order in binders. I now have sixteen 3 ring binders, the first letter dated march 31, 1943, the last, December 10. 1945. In addition, I have since found small batches of letters to other people: Dad's in-laws, and his own Mother and sister. Along with a wealth of unidentified photos, a few greeting cards, some drawings, discharge papers and other official Army papers I have a real World War II love story to share.
That is what I hope to do: share it on-line, one letter per day, beginning March 31, 2010, on the same day the first letter was written 57 years ago.