SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This month marks 80 years since the end of World War II in Europe. That anniversary is resonating for NPR's Bob Mondello because his family recently found some long-forgotten letters his mother had saved from the war. Since today is Mother's Day, we asked Bob to share them.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: They'd been sitting in a box in my sister's basement for decades.
This paper is so flimsy.
AARON: I know, yeah.
FORREST: Like, feel this paper.
JUANITA: They used to call it onion skin.
FORREST: I mean...
AARON: It's like tracing paper.
MONDELLO: My sister, Juanita, and her sons, Forrest and Aaron, have gathered in my dining room to check out the unexpected treasure she unearthed a few weeks ago - 43 letters from clearly smitten servicemen who had met my mom at Red Cross dances in Rome in the final months of World War II - also, to our astonishment, comment cards Mom had written about each guy.
JUANITA: She was a hussy.
(LAUGHTER)
MONDELLO: If she hadn't long since passed away, Mom would have hit the century mark this year, meaning that she got some of these letters when she was just 19, and the guys writing her would mostly have been about that age, too. So a quick reminder for my family about broadcast etiquette.
These are people who really exist. They would all be a hundred now, so we're only going to use first names when we're talking.
With that out of the way, onto the letters - the first thing you notice after the super-light airmail paper they used is that by today's standards, these greatest-generation guys are practically calligraphers - swirling cursive script, lines straight, even on unruled paper.
AARON: Punctuation and stuff is so proper.
MONDELLO: Beautiful penmanship, without necessarily writing skills to match. One guy, Frank, begins every letter hoping that it will find my mom in the very best of health. Then he tells her where he's writing from - the mess hall, say - and what the weather's like. Others are more fun. Ed, for instance.
FORREST: (Reading) Dear Homaha (ph).
MONDELLO: Mom was born in Panama, and her first name, Omah, was unusual enough that Ed decided to play.
FORREST: (Reading) Dear Homaha. Homaha. Ohmahaha (ph). Omah. I bet you didn't think that I could remember how to spell the above.
MONDELLO: There were two Eds and an Edmund (ph) among the letter writers. My sister looks through my mom's comment cards to find the right one.
JUANITA: So this one is just addresses.
MONDELLO: You flip the card over.
AARON: And then you read that.
JUANITA: Yeah.
(Reading) Edward. Met him at the APO. A very nice boy. We always have discussions of some sort, though. He's 28.
MONDELLO: That was old. Most of her correspondents were more like...
JUANITA: (Reading) Captain James. He'll be 20 in October. He's a nice boy, and he's from Texas.
MONDELLO: Rome had been liberated by allied forces just a few months earlier, and the Red Cross, where Mom worked, was sponsoring clubs for servicemen - table tennis, dances nearly every night. Mom was young, raven-haired and unattached, and seems to have had plenty of suitors - some smooth, like Charles.
FORREST: (Reading) I do hope to see you again, but until I do, do you mind if I fall in love with you?
MONDELLO: Others less smooth, like James.
FORREST: (Reading) Wonder how many times I would have to ask you before I got a date. That has worried me since I got back.
JUANITA: Mom had to explain that the Red Cross advised the young women they employed not to form attachments. She'd figured out the rationale. In with the 43 letters, she'd kept a newspaper article about war babies born to unwed mothers. And with James, at least, she appears to have been firm.
FORREST: (Reading) You put me straight on a lot of things, such as the reason you don't have dates. I cannot say that I blame you. In fact, it's a very smart thing on your part. I shouldn't agree with you, should I? - for it's going to be hard to convince you next time I see you.
MONDELLO: Seriously sweet, these guys. And full of surprises, even in their signatures.
FORREST: (Reading) Affectionately yours, Tommy. PS - don't forget the pies - smiley face.
MONDELLO: (Laughter) Smiley face?
FORREST: He loops his Y and then puts a smiley face.
AARON: He's ahead of his time.
MONDELLO: Aaron is beaming.
AARON: It's kind of cool, like, family history. Just, like, skimming through. I'm really enjoying.
MONDELLO: He's not alone. All of this is a mom I'd never even heard about - my sister either. When I asked our brother, Steve, what he knew about Mom during World War II, all he could come up with was...
STEVE: She played pingpong.
MONDELLO: 'Cause in family lore, that's how she met Dad. But she met Dad in New York years later, and she died long before Forrest and Aaron were born. So this really is new - a mom and grandma we'd never known, viewed through her interactions with guys she'd never so much as mentioned.
JUANITA: (Reading) Oh, Sergeant Bob. I met him in the snack bar office of the depot club. We also went on a whole-day picnic at the lake. He lives in California, was born in Illinois. He left to be reassigned. I think I love him. Winky, hot, Bob, cutie-pie.
MONDELLO: (Laughter) I have so many questions. Most of these guys, though, were just out on the town, and since she was meeting them at dances, what Mom mostly kept track of was their Fred Astaire potential, as with...
JUANITA: (Reading) Ricky. Met him at Tiber Terrace on June 16, 1945. He sings, and when he dances, he likes to dip. He has a friend by the name of Dave (ph). Dave apparently does not like to dip.
MONDELLO: Evidently just as important, their prowess at table tennis.
JUANITA: (Reading) Guy. I met him at the Corso Club, June 17, 1945. He plays pingpong, but I beat him.
MONDELLO: The loss seems to have gotten under Guy's skin. He sent this letter just a few days later.
FORREST: (Reading) Cook (ph) and I were on pass today, and we were in town and had a few fast games of pingpong. And honestly, I think that boy can say he learns a thing or two when he plays with me. In fact, if I were to play you again and really try, you could probably say the same thing. Anytime you feel lucky, just come on down and we'll settle it once and for all. This time, I'll forget - temporarily - that you're a lady. PS - seriously, I think you're a pretty good player. But don't you think I'm just a little bit better?
(LAUGHTER)
FORREST: Four exclamation points.
(LAUGHTER)
JUANITA: Give him hell, Mom.
MONDELLO: Mom saved one letter that was more serious - from a commander, which means he'd have been at least 35, 40.
MARK: Two days after Christmas.
MONDELLO: Juanita's husband, Mark, is our reader.
MARK: (Reading) Omah, someone somewhere once said that there was no fool like an old fool, and I once said that I was never going to fall in love again. I did pretty well, too, in holding to my resolution, until last July. That was when I first came to Rome. Three weeks later, on my way to my new assignment, I stopped over to get another look at the girl I couldn't get off my mind.
MONDELLO: Over the next few months, he came back again and again. He writes, they met, he had a silversmith make cameos he thought she'd like. She gave him medicinal cognac when he had a cold. He goes on for three pages about how he debated telling her how he felt but thought doing so would be selfish. So he kept going back to the front without saying anything - in anguish.
MARK: (Reading) I was so much in love with you that I couldn't sleep at night and took food as a matter of course only.
MONDELLO: So he decided...
MARK: (Reading) I would be very selfish this once. I wanted you.
MONDELLO: He resolved to finally speak his mind - even dreamed of asking her to marry him - and then returned on Christmas Day 1944 to see her.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARK: (Reading) But this trip to the club was where I tripped up. I saw you with the background - all those boys your own age, looking so admiringly at you, and the sergeant who worshipped you, and how happy you were among them. Well, I've pinched myself to wake up from my dreams.
MONDELLO: He quotes a bit of Tennyson, says he's giving her back to her own generation, and asks her to forgive him for slipping off to Naples without calling on her - that it's his selfishness cropping up again.
MARK: (Reading) I just want to see you as I was dreaming - not in farewells.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
MONDELLO: The war ended a few months later, and by the next Christmas, Mom was at Barnard College in New York, where she met a Columbia law student about her age named Tony Mondello, over a pingpong table. And yeah, he could dance - that was probably the clincher. As we were growing up, when Mom and Dad headed to the dance floor at parties, their friends always stepped back to watch.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MONDELLO: So in a way, we did know the Mom these guys were writing to - just didn't realize or remember after all these years. Isn't it just like a mom to leave her kids a reminder? I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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