Stop the Purges!

Last fall, in a fit of housecleaning, I tackled the room known as the Bermuda Triangle and began sorting papers. They included letters, greeting cards, and postcards from family and friends, including those left by my mother and my maternal aunt. I was on a paper purge, donating newspaper clippings and other material to the vertical files at the public library and consigning no-longer-useful documents to the recycling bin. But as I read some of the cards and letters, I realized what a treasure they were. 

For those who remember the pre-digital age—when shoeboxes barely contained stacks of postcards, letters, Polaroids, and photos developed at the K&B—such episodes of manic sorting and purging will be familiar. Undertaken on a semi-regular basis, they were necessary to keep the paraphernalia of the past from overtaking the present. But to archivists, historians, and other professionals who rely on these intimate primary documents to understand the past, we packrats are a precious bunch. 

“People write emails and texts all the time, but they don’t save them,” said Melissa Eastin, head of Special Collections at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library. “Written communication is disappearing. Archivists call it the “Digital Dark Age.” It definitely keeps us up at night. It’s one of our constant topics of discussion.”

In addition to my own family’s letters, I also had stacks of letters from friends and relatives. These missives from the past certainly weren’t going to end up in the trash, but I did feel a growing responsibility to share them with the people for whom they would mean the most—relatives of the letter-writers, many of whom were deceased. 

The purge now long forgotten, I sorted the stacks of letters into piles and put each pile into a shoebox. I had so many stacks that I ran out of containers, so I posted a notice on my neighborhood website: “Desperately Seeking Empty Shoeboxes.” Hours later a neighbor messaged me. I picked up about a dozen large boxes for athletic shoes—they would hold a lot of letters.

Ellen Doherty Rooney was first on my list. Her grandparents and my parents had been best friends who spent many weekends together but also stayed in touch by mail. They sent cards not just at Christmas but on such occasions as a hospital stay. My mom had saved cards and letters from Ellen’s late grandmother and mother as well as from her two aunts, both now living in other states.

I sent Ellen a Facebook message, and she dropped by a week later for a glass of wine and a chat. I gave her a large manila envelope full of missives and filled in some gaps, telling her stories about her family. 

At six the next morning, I got this message: “Ruth, I so enjoyed the visit yesterday evening! I’m sitting here looking through all of these wonderful cards and letters. Such a treasure. Thank you, thank you!”

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My cousin Ben Mann, an artist in Bellingham, Washington, was next. In late September, three weeks before Ben and his siblings met for a family reunion, I sent him a packet of memorabilia. Among the items in the Mann box were hand-made cards illustrated by Ben, the youngest of seven, when he was barely into his teens. On the backs he had printed “Mann-Made.” There were Christmas photo-cards from his sister Sarah, newsy letters from his mother Helen, and even a couple of scrawled notes from his dad.

His response to the materials, delivered in a letter to his siblings that he shared with me, revealed the heart of a historian:

“Subject: The envelope, please

“Aunt Ruth’s correspondence saved.... . Wow, Y’all ~what an amazing treasury to go through. 

“I decided to tackle it first by dividing them by sender (Cal, Sarah, Mom, etc.). Of course Queen of the Postage Stamp Mom was the tallest stack—Sarah, a close second! The few sweet photos, and of course Mom’s incredible gift for narrative and expressive thoughts as the family shifted through the years.

“Highlights from Mom to Ruth included the expansion of Bellingham airport, closure of JC Penney downtown, the arrival of Jordan’s first teeth, the special trek back East for Cal and Natalie’s wedding, and tender words around Dad’s passing, Maw Maw’s demise. Such an amazing collection of the everyday stuff of life. 

“Seeing Dad’s jocular thoughts in handwriting all cursive is a fascinating contrast to mom’s lighthearted signature print. She mentions at one point the difficulty of Thanksgiving for her as it was the season that her own Daddy passed—I’d forgotten that, and will think on it this year as our turkey plans take shape. Mammy’s note is more formal, her elegant script remarking how ‘little Ben will be the only “believer” in Santa Claus this year’ postmarked 1966. (I still am, for the record.)

“I will continue to love the task, and sift through all, and then bring it to our 10/14/16 gathering at Semiahmoo [Resort in Blaine, Washington], ready to pass it on to whomever would like to be next.”

The family reunion went off as planned, and a couple of weeks later Ben told me that he and his siblings has agreed to keep the collection intact and pass it down a sibling at a time. Ellen, for her part, had divided the letters and sent each of her two aunts a stack. Two delightful outcomes, but with two-dozen shoeboxes packed with correspondence, I began to wonder if I had bitten off too big a project.

Eastin was unequivocally positive about continuing. “They [the documents] are absolutely worth hanging on to,” she said. “In letters you find more on-the-ground perspective, a microcosm of life, the daily minutiae that you don’t see in bigger writings.

“Personal letters tend to be unguarded communications between people. You see a more emotional connection.”

It is a good reminder, especially in this, the season in which we’ve likely sent and received the bulk of our annual written communiqués, that we might spare a few of them from the trash can. I’ll continue to correspond with friends and relatives, offering them copies of missives from the Age of Pen and Paper. I’m convinced that the handwritten correspondence of the past is worth hanging on to—and passing on.