A program about letters, and the people who wrote and received them during the 20th century’s two World Wars, will be presented at the Greene County Museum, 218 E. Lincoln Way, on Sunday, May 18.
The free event, part of the museum’s Sunday program series, is set for 2 pm.
Mikki Schwarzkopf of Jefferson will read excerpts from letters penned by E.B. Wilson to his wife. Wilson was too old to join the World War I’s armed forces, but served as a YMCA liaison in southern France, interacting with soldiers. Wilson is the man for whom Wilson Avenue in Jefferson is named. He and his wife Mary “Minnie” Ainsworth donated the statue of Abraham Lincoln that stands on the south side of the Greene County courthouse in Jefferson.
Margaret Hamilton, also of Jefferson, will read letters written to her father Albert Hamilton as he recuperated from major injuries suffered in an Army training accident in 1943. He was hospitalized for more than a year in California, and the cards and notes from his Greene County friends and relatives surely aided his convalescence. Hamilton worked in his family’s business, Hamilton Electric.
“The letters to my dad give a flavor of what went on on the home front,” says Margaret Hamilton.
Denise O’Brien Van of Jefferson will dip into letters mailed from World War II’s European Theatre by her father Clem O’Brien and his older brother Maurice O’Brien. The missives were sent to their parents, Tom and Mae McCarville O’Brien. Clem, who spent most of the war in England as an aide to a colonel, typed letters about visiting historic English sites and about food. Maurice’s handwritten letters are newsy and loving and also about food. Clem O’Brien was a U.S. Post Office rural mail carrier and revered Little League coach. His brother Maurice manned a machine gun in the Battle of the Bulge, where he was wounded. He died of leukemia at age 40.
