Dearest Reader,

Among my father’s papers is this letter from Towertown Studios in Chicago promoting a correspondence course in drawing. By itself, it might seem like nothing more than an old piece of advertising mail. But knowing when my father received it gives it a much more personal meaning. This was part of the mail arriving while he was still exploring possible careers, before he was drafted into military service during World War II.

The letter came from Ray Frey, director of the Towertown Studios Drawing Course, and offered the opportunity to learn drawing at home through a series of mailed lessons. Students would begin with basic exercises and gradually progress to drawing heads, figures, advertisements, and story illustrations. The promise went beyond learning something for enjoyment. The course suggested that artistic ability could lead to employment and even “fame and financial independence.”

For a young man trying to decide what he might do with his life, advertisements like this offered possibilities. Correspondence schools made it possible to explore a profession without moving away or enrolling in a traditional college. Drawing and commercial illustration were presented not simply as artistic pursuits but as practical skills that might become a career.

I do not know how seriously my father considered becoming an artist or commercial illustrator, or whether he ever returned the application. What I do know is that he kept this letter. It belongs to a period when he was looking at different possibilities and imagining what his future might become.

Like millions of young men of his generation, the freedom to decide what came next was suddenly overtaken by events far beyond his control. He was drafted into the service, and whatever possibilities he had been considering had to be put aside.

That is what makes this ordinary piece of mail worth preserving. It captures my father at a moment before his path had been determined. He was a young man looking through the opportunities that came his way and considering what he might become. We know what happened next. He did not. When he saved this letter, the future was still open.