“Wish You Were Here”
Another photograph shows the Seattle waterfront and a streamlined passenger vessel.
Turn it over and there is another message:
“Wish you were here.”
It is such a familiar postcard phrase, but in the context of their lives, it means something more.
My father wasn’t on vacation. He was in the service. Mary was thousands of miles away in New Hampshire. They were moving toward marriage while living with one of the realities experienced by countless couples during World War II
He was seeing places she couldn’t experience with him.
So he sent her the picture.
And on the back, he told her what he really wanted.
He wished she were there.
Read More From Nancy
Passion Play on the Eve of War
Among my father’s papers is this program from the Black Hills Passion Play, presented by the Saginaw County Council of Churches at the Auditorium in Saginaw, Michigan. There is no year printed on the program, but my father was living in Saginaw in 1941, and the dates printed on the program: December 10 through 14, […]
National Defense Training School
Among my parents’ papers that have survived the years is this simple letter from the National Defense Training School in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Although modest in appearance, the document provides a valuable glimpse into my father, Roger E. Watson, as a young man before military service and his marriage to my mother. The letter certifies that […]
Seattle Through My Father’s Eyes
Inside are miniature commercial souvenir photographs showing some of the places my father was seeing: Mount Rainier, Seattle’s waterfront, Pioneer Square and the Aurora Bridge with Mount Rainier visible beyond the city. They weren’t photographs my father took himself. They were commercially produced souvenirs that a traveler or serviceman could purchase and send home. But […]
