“Darling, I Love You”
One of the little photographs shows Mount Rainier rising above the landscape, its snow-covered peak dominating the view.
Turn it over.
In my father’s handwriting are the words:
“Darling, I love you.”
There is something particularly moving about finding those words more than eighty years later.
My father wasn’t writing for anyone else to read. He certainly wasn’t thinking about a daughter who would someday find the photograph among her mother’s belongings and try to reconstruct this period of their lives.
These were simply private words from a young man far from home to the woman he loved.
On one side is Mount Rainier, one of the great landmarks of the Pacific Northwest.
On the other is Mary.
The photograph tells me where my father was.
His handwriting tells me what mattered to him while he was there.
Read More From Nancy
Report of Separation
This worn piece of paper is one of the most important documents in my father’s collection. Officially titled a Report of Separation, it marked the end of his military service in the United States Army Air Corps and authorized his honorable discharge on August 16, 1944. At first glance, it appears to be little more than a […]
A Wartime Marriage
This is the marriage certificate of my parents, Roger Edward Watson and Mary Elizabeth Hannigan. They were married on May 3, 1944, at Saint John the Evangelist Church in Concord, New Hampshire, while my father was home on leave during World War II. My father came from West Virginia, while my mother had grown up […]
My Father and His College Newspaper
My parents kept these copies of The Shepherd College Picket from the time my father, Roger, attended Shepherd College in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Looking through them now gives me another way to consider his life before he became my father. These pages preserve something of the community around him during his college years. The issues […]
