In the 21st century, handwritten correspondences are out, and electronic communication is in. E-mails, texts and instant messages zoom through cyberspace with convenience and ease, temporarily taking up screen space until their owners casually delete them with a click of a button. “Letter-writing is definitely a lost art,” said Sarah Tapper, curator of collections at the Old Courthouse Museum. “A hundred years down the road or sooner, we’ll regret things weren’t saved. A lot of things will be lost because they’re not kept in hard-copy form.”
Carolyn Strunk saved letters from her son, Bill, and his travel through the Peace Corps
Are letters a fading piece of history?
Writing on paper less common in tech age
LINDA YANG
For the Argus Leader
Published: 08/8/05
On days when she wants to reminisce, Carolyn Strunk pulls out her blue folder of letters.
This folder houses many priceless treasures. There are letters from her husband, Carl, to his sister during World War II and the Battle of the Bulge. There are letters from her son, Bill, and his travel through the Peace Corps. There are pictures, stamps and foreign envelopes.
The letters fill Strunk’s mind with memories.
“It reminds me of the war years and what they were like,” she said of her husband’s letters, “and of when Bill was in Morocco and I worried about him all the time.”
Strunk, a former published writer who is now retired, is part of an older generation that has the luxury of reliving the past through letters. The correspondences she saved are part of a vanishing time – a time when letter-writing was commonplace.
In the 21st century, handwritten correspondences are out, and electronic communication is in. E-mails, texts and instant messages zoom through cyberspace with convenience and ease, temporarily taking up screen space until their owners casually delete them with a click of a button.
Because people seldom print a hard copy, they end up chucking out correspondences from their friends and loved ones. This is a scary thought for many, because deleting electronic messages is tantamount to deleting history.
Indeed, much of what we know about history is founded on primary documents such as letters. As a result, many are lamenting the loss of such historical artifacts.
“Letter-writing is definitely a lost art,” said Sarah Tapper, curator of collections at the Old Courthouse Museum. “A hundred years down the road or sooner, we’ll regret things weren’t saved. A lot of things will be lost because they’re not kept in hard-copy form.”
Hard copies are extremely significant for museums when they try to piece together exhibits.
“Primary documents in general are very important to research; diaries and letters are especially important,” said Adam Nyhaug, collections assistant at the museum. “The majority of what we know about history is things that are from written documents.”
Museums may be more concerned with history on a broader level, but personal letters engender reconstruction of personal history. Strunk, for one, treasures her letters and intends to pass them on to her kids.
“I think it’s very nice to keep letters because it’s for later, for the family,” she said.
Strunk has had her fair share of letters from her old literary friends from college and her parents.
“My parents wrote long letters to my brother and I,” Strunk said. “If I didn’t write a letter to my mother every week, I’d get a phone call from my brother saying, ‘Why not?’ ”
Strunk said the letters were her mother’s way of letting her children know she was thinking of them.
Today, a mother and a grandmother herself, Strunk said she still writes letters, but the majority of the letters she handles are in her collection of old ones.
Patty Peters, a mother of three, wants to pass her family’s memories down to future generations as well. Peters, who has kept a diary since childhood, started saving letters years ago, when she started dating the man who later became her husband.
“It’s really neat to have some things written down,” she said of her old letters. “When I read letters, it brings back memories of youth.”
When her two oldest daughters left for college, they followed the typical college-student routine and e-mailed home in lieu of writing letters. Peters wanted to keep a record of her correspondences with the girls, so she started saving all of the messages on her computer.
To date, she has 50 or so messages printed out and stored in a manila envelope. Her girls appreciate what she’s doing because they recognize she’s preserving history.
“I save (their e-mails) because it’s a history of their life,” Peters said.
Although the popularity of actual letter writing has waned in recent years, many people slowly are becoming more vigilant about preserving electronic messages.
Nyhaug thinks that, in the future, society will adapt to this new form of correspondence and preserve it accordingly.
“I think eventually we’ll get to the point where we’ll have digital archives of e-mails and such,” he said.
In the meantime, Strunk said she still prefers real letters to e-mail because they offer a personal touch and singularity.
“I think if you’re going to sit down a write a letter, you might as well write a real letter,” she said. “I think a person expresses themself somehow in a letter. It’s unique. It’s their feelings.”
