FAIRMOUNT, N.D. (AP) - More than 4,000 miles separated a Fairmount woman from her longtime pen pal in England. But frankly, what is a few thousand miles and the Atlantic Ocean when corresponding with a friend for more than 60 years?
Gloria Hedtke Joerg was able to meld her family with that of her longtime pen pal Sylvia Dee, a relationship that spanned generations as the women’s children and grandchildren became pen pals with members of the other’s family. Of course, today’s younger generation is more likely to correspond on Facebook, text and email than to write a letter, but they are still maintaining the family connections that began when Gloria was a teenage girl trying to help a child in England during World War II.
Gloria grew up in Fairmount. The city underwent its duty during the war. The girls and women took turns watching for German planes while standing atop the school roof, and the men walked the streets to make sure the blackout curtains were drawn. She followed what was happening to the children in England during World War II.
Gloria spent about 62 years in Milwaukee, but returned to Fairmount in 2012 with her two daughters, Kathi Patterson and DeAnna Miller, and a granddaughter, Dakota Miller. Although one leg of the pen pals has since passed away, several generations of both families came together in Fairmount last week as Sylvia’s daughter, Cynthia Buckle, and her great-granddaughter, Siobhan O’Keeffe, traveled to Fairmount to stay with Gloria and her family a few days. Cynthia and Siobhan left Friday to spend about five days in New York, before returning home to England.
Cynthia lives in Suffolk, England. She and Siobhan were looking forward to speaking at Fairmount’s After School Program that day, and then driving to Wahpeton to go to Walmart. The women sat in Gloria’s home talking about a connection between the two families. Cynthia said the stories Gloria told were new as her mother was a quiet woman who didn’t often talk about these early years.
Although not much of a conversationalist, Sylvia was a fantastic pen pal. She wrote about her life to Gloria and kept a connection going that allowed them years of correspondence: Teenagers to marriage and raising children. The two clicked as they essentially were the same age and underwent many of the same things, despite their distance apart. Both women had marital difficulties, with Sylvia’s husband dying at a young age, followed by Gloria eventually divorcing her first husband.
Gloria recently had a stroke, so she doesn’t remember the exact contents of the letters. She remembers keeping them, but not their exact whereabouts. She smiled as she remembered those first early years of writing to a pen pal in England during the war.
“We didn’t really know everything going on in England. All we had for information was the radio. We didn’t really know what was going on in the rest of the world,” she told the Daily News of Wahpeton (https://bit.ly/1tUUNbJ ).
Because the Germans were bombing parts of England, including London, many school-aged children were sent to safer regions of England to avoid the blitzkrieg. Sylvia and her family were not sent away, but school items were hard to come by, including things like crayons, pencils and paper. The Red Cross brought red school boxes to Fairmount so children there could help fill them with school supplies.
Gloria said she doesn’t know how her mother scraped up the money, but she was able to buy crayons and other items to put in the box. It was sent to Sylvia’s brother, Jim, who was Gloria’s original pen pal. When Jim was killed in the Suez Canal during the war, Sylvia took up the letter-writing campaign to Gloria, a relationship that continued until Sylvia’s death in 2000.
The two met at different intervals, starting when Gloria traveled to England years ago when her children were still young. That trip was cut about a week short after a fiasco with a telegram sent by Gloria’s husband to “call home,” translated to “come home” when she received the telegram on her first trip. Gloria returned to England about four times and Sylvia flew to the United States three times.
“I don’t know how she did it. Mum was very quiet. I don’t know how she got the courage to get on a plane all by herself,” Cynthia said. “I didn’t. I had to bring my granddaughter with.”
Gloria was raised in a small town before moving to Milwaukee. She said she doesn’t know how she got the nerve to travel alone to England, either.
“It was my first trip. I had never traveled alone. I remember taking the bus from Milwaukee to Chicago all my myself, before getting on a plane,” she said. Gloria had never met Sylvia before, so that brought its own fear of meeting someone for the first time, and staying in their home.
Gloria was courageous enough to travel alone, and developed more bravery a few years later when she went to nursing school at age 39. She was recently divorced and had to save the $1,100 needed to pay for nursing school. But she put the funds together and attended school. Gloria worked as a nurse until turning 69. She eventually left Milwaukee with her two daughters and granddaughter and came home to Fairmount.
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Information from: Wahpeton Daily News, https://www.wahpetondailynews.com
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