TO MISS GAIL REYNOLDS
It all started out so innocently. A few years back, we were wandering around Lone Star Antiques, and I came across a v-mail letter. In all the hours over all the years that I’d spent in antique stores, I’d never seen one. A v-mail letter is a letter sent from one of our soldiers during World War 2, special War & Navy Departments mail service.
You know that it came home with me.
Then, a few months or a year later, I was in our little local thrift store here in Roanoke. (Texas, not Virginia LOL) In a glass case, they had an old photograph, a vintage postcard, and a v-mail letter. In a thrift store – not an antique store. Of course, all three items came home with me.
But they say you have to have three to have a collection. I didn’t have three. I only had two. So, I wandered over to a site that I rarely visit – ebay. Did they have v-mail letters! More than I’d ever need. There was a collection of around 19 letters that caught my eye. All from George Tweed. Most of them to Miss Gail Reynolds, in Munday, Texas. Letters that came here, not that far from where I am in north Texas.
Yes, I had to bid on those. Yes, I won.
Now, I have more than three – so I have an honest to goodness ‘collection’ now. Ha!
But I wasn’t satisfied to put them on a shelf and let them sit. I needed to know more. Especially when so much information is there in the letters. There was enough that I got a sense of who George Tweed was. But who was Miss Gail Reynolds? What were her hopes and dreams? Did they get together after the war? Did life turn out to be what they’d hoped for?
I’ll add a spoiler here. Yes, George and Gail married. They were together the rest of their lives. And an odd thing … they’re buried together at a cemetery in southern California…the same cemetery that my ex-in-laws are buried in. What are the odds of that?
Using these letters, I wrote a story set during World War 2, To Miss Gail Reynolds. I only hope I did this couple justice as I fictionally told a story about their lives, based on the facts that I could find.
To Miss Gail Reynolds is one of the thirteen historical short stories in Pieces of the Past. It’s available on Amazon here:
Trisha Faye 