Featured While emptying recycling, found these letters...

So get rid of them BEFORE you croak !!! ... Joy.

 

Once it's in the trash it's fair game, that's the law everywhere. There's no question of legality here, just privacy and courtesy. And since there's a good chance everyone in the letters is deceased, privacy doesn't apply either.

 

Shred them !! In one of my letters from my mother to my father during WW2 She wrote about her HUGE disappointment at giving birth to another girl (me) .. she already had a boy and girl and had wanted boy, girl BOY !! She never let me forget that during her lifetime .. things like "You were supposed to be a boy" and "You should never have been born" etc. etc. I was a beautiful baby and little girl .. most mothers would have felt blessed. I'll never understand her .. but still I loved her. I am shredding those letters first as they are not for the eyes of others ... Joy.

 

I have a load of letters my parents wrote to each other the year before they got married. My favorite is this one, written the night before their wedding:

Washington, June 24, 1941 11:30PM

Dearest Sweetheart,

The bachelor dinner is all over and the boys have just left. We had quite a gay time and I was complimented from all sides on my cooking. I grilled steak a lo my Darling Mary. We drank several toasts, one one to the Bride proposed by the groom, after which we destroyed our glasses so they would never be used in a less honorable fashion. This was in the nature of a minor tragedy since it left us with three glasses. Thereafter one of us drank from an egg cup and one from a tea cup. Altogether we assimilated slightly less than a gallon of wine, (something I can’t read here, I think about coffee). One of the boys had to walk off a fit of nausea and the other three were quite gay. I felt quite as normal, probably because I ate so much. Right now I am a little sleepy.

We sang for a while, especially those songs with Mary in them. (note: Mary was my mother’s name.) “Flow Gently Sweet Afton”, “the Rose of Tralee”, “Mary is a Good old Name”, and the like. It was all a lot of fun.

I’ll cut this short Dearest, to make the last mail. I hope it reaches you before breakfast, but I’m afraid it won’t. I will be in at 9:18, and please meet me at the escalator. I love you as much and anyone can.

Your affectionate lover,
Harold

 

another perspective: give them to the genealogists of the families. More valuable than gold, and they will do the courteous thing too.

oh. and good thing we have Instagram now... ???

 

That is LOVELY Marie .. lovely ... Joy.

 

I trust you
Who knows why they were thrown away. Many of us that are sellers see things like this all the time, boxes of letters, photo albums, postcards etc and wonder why would a family member not want to keep them. Many times there are no family members or perhaps the family just has no interest in them. They were important to someone, I like to think they would be happy that someone else thinks they are worthwhile keeping too
I hate to think that in a hundred years from now there will be paper trail from this time period. No photos, postcards, letters everything is sent via the computer/phone, photos are stored rather than developed.
I'm all for keeping the letters

 

Our time period meanwhile won't have the paper trail; it stops dead. No one under 70 writes letters any more.

 

Took my own advise - just totally destroyed something I wrote 50 years ago - now when I drop dead no one will be the wiser. Personal correspondence isn't 'free game' in my world.

 

True, but every financial corporation, internet service provider, and telecommunications phone company will be able to tell your descendants where you were every minute of every day every time you charged something, touched a keyboard, or dialed a number... it's out there in digital storage in a backup server... so I'm not concerned. https://web.archive.org/

 

Hi,
I have the same problem only with a trunkful of letters and photographs from WWll. The owner died and the family put all of this stuff out for the trash. I offered it to the VFW post and they declined it. They say they are overwhelmed with all this stuff. The VFW group is down to five people. The post will soon close down and the records of the group and some decorations will be sent to the National Headquarters. The rest of the stuff will be trashed.. It is all so sad that all of this archival records will soon be lost. When I finally go I am sure my family will say What the hell is all of this stuff? send to the trash heap."
greg

 

not in these circumstances.

 

Once it's in the recipient's possession, it's the recipient's problem essentially.

 

Thanks for all the thoughts. Figured it might make a good discussion and thanks to everyone for being respectful, even got me thinking about some things.

Please understand, I would have had zero interest in these if they were generic letters. The pull was that they were 75 year old WWII letters. I had a choice, either leave them where they would be destroyed by the next morning, or take them.

It is not impossible my friend and I might do some research if the letters have a lot of historical info, and see if we can hunt down anyone who remains in the family who might be interested.

 

I'll be busy shredding in the next few weeks ... I agree with wiscbirddog, Personal correspondence isn't "fair game" in my world either. ... Joy.

 

IMO, anything that ends up in a public bin is "fair game."

Can you imagine how much someone (including family) would enjoy the rescued bits 100 years from now? Even the intimate stuff (perhaps, especially that!).

Of course, I say that knowing it won't be my bits in a bin because I'm privacy paranoid and have been shredding personal documents since the nineties.

 

Reading this thread reminded me of what happened after an English professor and writer found an old suitcase full of letters from the WWII era at a flea market in St. Louis in 2002. He did a lot of research and wrote at least a couple of books about the people in the letters. Inman's War was about the young couple's love story and also the experiences of an African-American soldier serving in the war. Olivia's Story was based on his research on the later life of the wife, who was a teacher in St. Louis and a significant teacher to many. His research also uncovered her participation in a crucial civil rights case, Shelley v. Kraemer, decided by the U. S. Supreme Court.

And it all started with letters found in a suitcase at a flea market!

https://wcfcourier.com/news/metro/w...cle_abcb928b-62c2-59a5-887c-cdc91a76f382.html

https://wcfcourier.com/lifestyles/d...cle_d046dd21-c4c5-5794-8342-f73069647ea8.html

 

So he profited from the proceeds of someones private correspondence ... SHEESH !!! ... Shred the stuff folks if you don't wish to have your privacy invaded !! If you really don't care then all's fair game ... don't toss ... SHRED !!! .. Joy.

 

That isn't the way I look at what he did. I think he added to our knowledge of a historical period in the U.S. But our interpretations are equally valid, IMO.

 

I have one pile ready for the shredder !! .. lots more to sort .. Joy.