Title: Dear Hannah, Dear Pa
Description: The box of letter lay undisturbed in a discarded bureau in Aunt Hannah's attic for sixty-five years. Letters my father, Garfield Morrison, had written to his family during his fifteen months of army service in World War I. For twenty-six years, they lay unread in my closet. In 2009, when I opened the box, I found the the rubber bands had shriveled and fallen away. The envelopes, yellowed with age, held crumbling sheets of YMCA stationary.

I embarked on a delightful experience -- getting to know my father when he was twenty-five years old. I, too, had served in the army when I was twenty-five, I, too, had served time in army camps in the South. The many similarities between his experiences in WWI and mine WWII came as a revelation. 

How surprised my father would be to know that his daughter has brought his descriptive letters to light, after they lay unread for more than ninety years.

-- Caroline Morrison Garrett
Subjects: World War I, memoir, personal narrative, correspondence, personal letters, military life
Places: Bethel, Connecticut, Fort Slocum, New York, Camp Jackson, North Carolina, Camp Hancock, Georgia
People: Caroline Morrison Garret, Garfield Morrison
Time periods: 1911-1919