Letter to Wilfred R. Franson
U.S. Army Air Force
Charleston Army Air Field, South Carolina
27 March 1944

1505 S. Broadway
Urbana, Ill.
27 March 1944

Dear Bill —

This is just a note, because it's after 10:30, and I should be in bed. Maybe it would be a better idea to write early, as soon as I get home, but it seems nicer to do it at the end of the day, when I'm all ready for bed. It's a kind of substitute for saying goodnight to you.

Your letter came today. — The one you wrote Friday. I'm anxious to learn how you fared on your house-hunting expedition Saturday.

How can you manage to spend so much time looking? Don't you ever have to work? What is a "partly furnished kitchen"? $20 a week — ye gods! Did it have a shower? And what about the new apts. Are they unfurnished? Tell me all.

The snapshots of you and Cotton are swell. I never have such luck, but I'm enclosing a couple samples. Remember the day we took them?

I'd better close now, or I'll never be able to get up in time tomorrow. This morning we had a flat, but Blowers leaves so early that we managed to fix it in time, and I punched in at 6 on the dot.

Today Colwell and I got a ride to town with a captain. Colwell said he could have sworn he saw De Mattia (?) at the gate a day or two ago. Is he still around? Colwell also says that a lot of the boys have been sent to Kansas.

Goodnight, dear. I love you.

          Your ever-loving wife,
          Vera
  

  
Notes by RWF:

Wilfred R. Franson and Vera Howe Franson met at the beginning of 1944 in an airplane hangar at Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois; and married 25 February 1944 at Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Among other common interests, both had been hobbyist small-plane pilots before World War II, and each had been a member of a small club which owned a plane: Bill in Oregon, and Vera in Wisconsin.

At the time of this letter, Bill is a U.S. Army Air Force instructor in celestial navigation for pilots, recently reassigned to Charleston, South Carolina. Vera is a civilian instructor in celestial navigation for Army pilots in the ground school at Chanute Field.

Bill has only a rented room in Charleston, versus the current apartment Vera still has in Urbana. Since she doesn't want to commit them to an apartment in Charleston until she can secure a job there, this letter shows Vera's ongoing concern with apartment-hunting and how to manage the transition of furniture and other household goods.

Cotton was one of a group of Army buddies: Cotton, Rosengana, Klein, and Franson — names my father would list off to me long afterwards. "A regular League of Nations", as my father enjoyed describing this or any diverse group, even long after the League itself was defunct.
  

© 2014 Robert Wilfred Franson