Preserving your family letters in the disappearing Age of Handwriting
Looking over old letters, the kind that get read by actors in those Ken Burns documentaries, you have to wonder what's been lost due to the dominance of text messaging and email.
Will our children's grandchildren fondly scan their grandpa and grandma's Facebook messages with the same sense of wonderment that many of us feel toward handwritten letters?
Author Nancy Rial, a library media specialist for the Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts, just wrote a book about her Uncle Alan W. Lowell, who was killed during the Battle of Metz, shortly after landing on the beaches of Normandy, France.
The self-published "Alan's Letters" is exactly what it sounds like -- a compilation of his correspondence during World War II, interspersed with a detailed account of the actions of his comrades in the 66th Infantry Division.
"Alan represents all the young soldiers voices when he expresses a
yearning for a normal home life again after the war," Rial writes, "and an appreciation
of all that he has had as a youth growing up in America."
Although Rial was able to create an amazing tribute to her uncle by interspersing world history with the thoughts of an average guy, you need not have such a dramatic purpose to preserve your family letters.
Whether your uncle wrote love letters to your aunt from the foxhole or from his college dorm, it's all precious stuff that helps bring him back to life for the family who never got an opportunity to know him.
Even if you don't have an ambition to tell "the big picture," it makes sense to scan all your family letters and documents worth saving, sort them in chronological order, and publish them in a simple photo book.
We've used all of these on-line publishing companies and have been extremely satisfied with the quality of the printing and binding:
1. My Publisher
2. Blurb
3. Mac Photo Books
But if you do want to tell a bigger story with your letters and photographs, the Reel Profiles team can help you accomplish that. Writing thematic family history coffee table books -- using the best interview anecdotes and your favorite photos and documents -- is one of our specialties.
Ask about the coffee table book option when you are exploring our personal documentary services!