Before the Letters Came
For months, I have tried to piece together the story of my grandparents from what little I had. It wasn’t until the rest of the letters arrived that I began to understand where it all began. The few hundred I’d started with became over a thousand seemingly overnight. They’re worn dark, not only from time but from the heat of a house fire in the 1980s. After all they’ve endured to survive, I feel incredibly lucky to hold them.
The first letters I received access to almost seven months ago were all V-Mails from Veazey dated late 1942 to early 1944, essentially the duration of Kay’s time stationed in England, but that’s the extent of her correspondence I have from during his service. I don’t think it’s a matter of him not wanting to keep her letters, but instead of him not being able to. His letters detail that many personal notes had to be routinely destroyed for security’s sake. He acknowledges in one message shortly before D-Day that he was sending her the folder he kept all her V-Mails in because he wouldn’t be able to keep them on his person much longer and wanted her to have them. After the war, he returned home to the suburbs of New York City, where he was able to collect all of Veazey’s letters for the remainder of their separation. The rest of hers are lost to time, save for the snippets referenced in Kay’s own letters.
She saved almost everything he wrote her. Including, as luck would have it, his very first letter. Postmarked on 4 December 1941, just days after meeting and days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, it reads like the beginning of any friendly correspondence:
Hi Veazey!
No time to write? I’m just a little disappointed in you as I had expected at least a card. Hope you weren’t offended at the one I sent you — I didn’t know just how to spell your last name — but in the interim I found out as some of the other fellows received letters.
You know — we really had a swell time at the school. It was too bad we had to leave. Jay and I are seriously thinking of taking a ride up some time after the first of the year. That is if the higher ups don’t decide to move us out of South Carolina.
It is raining down here, and as usual we are out in it. Now that maneuvers are all over I hope things will resume their normal status.
Yesterday was payday — today I have an almost empty wallet and very delightful hangover. I bet Miss Kennedy would appreciate that. Halleluia. Veazey, have you seen the light?
Tonight we are giving a farewell dinner to one of our boys who is getting out this month. So I guess I’ll hang another load on. What a life.
Have you any idea of what sort of congenial conversation I can use to make up a decent interesting letter? What does one write about? If I can get rid of the guy who’s pounding on my head (yes I still have a big head) maybe I can do better.
I hope you’ll keep your promise and write. I like to receive them, but it is one helluva job to get me going to write one. Talking is my speed, I can sling more bull as you might have noticed and make less sense.
Well, the whistle [is] going to blow any minute. So until I hear from you,
As Ever,
K. Kay
Despite the United States declaring war on the Axis powers mere days after their correspondence began, the letters in the following months took on an incredibly positive tone. Kay described his routine at camp, the day the cavalry said goodbye to its horses, and even his root canal at the Army dentist, all with an air of humor that isn’t entirely expected from someone who had just learned that their service contract would no longer be ending the following month and would instead be both extended indefinitely and most likely to include overseas combat.
It is not until 1 March 1942, just under three months in to their correspondence, that the facade seems to crack. Coincidentally, it is when he admits that his impending entrance to the war is the only reason he is willing to speak his feelings so freely.
Dear Veazey,
After considerable time and waiting for the postman to ring twice, I thought perhaps you were snowed in up in the mountains. But then taking everything into consideration, I figured it was sort of selfish of me to expect an answer to all my letters, and soon too.
But be that as it may — patience being a virtue, I was rewarded with the receipt of your swell letter. Thanks a lot. Was awfully sorry to hear that you didn’t route your trip thru Columbia. I would have liked to have seen you again.
As it is I don’t think we will ever have the privilege of meeting again. due to new restrictions, curfews, and curtailment of weekend passes it will be impossible to get up to Banner’s Elk.
We can stay out till 12 o’clock every nite — goody, I’ll take vanilla! But I gave up the hard stuff for Lent — so far have been on the wagon for a week and I don’t feel too good.
I’ll have to keep my nose clean for a while tho, they just made me a corporal and so I can’t tear around for a while anyway. Corporal Kenneth M. Kay (the ‘M.’ stands for Mathew, after me godfather Mathew O’Shaughnessy — god bless him) sounds good, I waited a long time.
You know Veazey, I have your picture on my shelf. I made a frame for it — it’s surrounded by pipes, shaving brush, toothpaste, razor, comb, and soap — lovely setting.
When I read your last letter, it seemed as if you were really speaking and it burned me up not to be able to see you. Your letters mean a lot, V — and I hope you never stop — and when we move out, I wish you’d keep on writing. I realize it’s asking a lot, after all you really don’t know me, but I feel as if I had known you all my life and were the someone I was looking for. Funny, isn’t it. I come all the way from Jersey — in the army to Ft. Jackson — and meet a girl up in North Carolina, who in the 4 days I saw her did something to me inside that no one ever did before.
I wasn’t ever going to mention it, but circumstances being what they are, and the future so dark, somehow I couldn’t help blurting it out. I do hope you understand and don’t take offense at what I’ve said. After all, there is no harm in admitting your feelings towards someone. Before I get too involved in a tangle of words, I’d better close — so anxiously awaiting your next letter — I am
As Ever,
Kay
Kay writes again on the 13th of March, thanking her for the swell letter and for taking his choice of conversation in stride. While Veazey’s words and response are unfortunately lost, Kay’s choice of words implies that while his feelings may not be reciprocated to the same degree, they are not entirely unwelcome. It is then, fifty one years to the day before my parents married, that he signs off with “Love” for the first time.
When they met, Veazey was in her first semester of a pre-nursing program at Lees-McRae College, just a few weeks past her seventeenth birthday and living on her own for the first time. Her father was killed in a car accident on his way home from work not even four years prior. After his death, a close family friend became her stepfather. While his presence provided a sense of stability, his job required frequent relocations across the Southern states. Veazey graduated from her ninth high school and was likely very grateful to only have to move in to her freshman dorm just once. She had opted to pay for her own schooling as opposed to living with her grandmother and taking care of her younger sisters in exchange for tuition. Above all, she valued the sense of security that came with the freedom to decide her own fate. Veazey craved stability and was determined to provide it for herself.
On the other hand, Kay was a few years older and from a tight-knit community in New Jersey. He’d moved there with his parents from Brooklyn as a toddler and remained there into early adulthood. He didn’t pursue a college degree, he pursued life experience in the form of cross country road trips and jobs back in the big city. He was itching for change. Driven by this and the sense of duty that affected most young men at the time, he enlisted for a year of service in January 1941, eleven months and five days before the United States would declare war on Japan.
In many ways, they were opposites: North and South (or Yankee and Rebel, in their words), college girl and soldier, one with dreams of change and the other with dreams of stability. But they were both quick witted and stubborn in their own ways, and it was enough for something to click.
I imagine Veazey feeling flattered but confused by his declaration of love. Sure, she had had a great time, but their meeting was so brief. I imagine a cautious reply coming from someone who enjoyed the attention but feared what a commitment would mean for her newfound freedom. Taking the impending deployment out of the equation, how could anyone feel so strongly so quickly? On 21 March, Kay tries to answer just that:
If you can’t understand why after four days of being at L.M.C. I felt that way, perhaps I can explain.
It must mean something — if I constantly was on the watch for you, and I certainly must have annoyed you with persistent attention. I tried to meet you wherever you were going, even felt a slight twinge of jealousy when I saw someone else receive the benefit of your attention. Talking to you or listening to you was sheer delight. Even walking a few steps, or sitting by your side at that party made me partly oblivious to all surrounding — and now four months have passed, but those four days linger on and on and still I write. Does that explain why?
From these first letters (and the many more to come), I’ve gained a better understanding of how exactly they met.
Troop D of the 102d Cavalry, of which Kay was a member, was sent to the Appalachian mountains for four days at the end of November 1941. His platoon went to Banner Elk and stayed on the campus of Lees McRae, while the other platoons of Troop D stayed in Blowing Rock. The exact purpose of the visit is unclear, but it seems to me that with the Carolina Manoeuvres (the largest Army training simulation ever conducted up to that point) finished that summer and war yet to be declared, troopers were sent to bivouac in landscapes similar to those they expected to encounter when they inevitably entered war. These men expected to see the cold mountains of Belgium and Germany (though this was never openly admitted), so they were sent to visit the cold mountains of the Carolinas.
It’s worth mentioning that it was not uncommon for student clubs at universities across the United States (especially those in close proximity to military bases) to organize events, entertainment, and social gatherings for soldiers. Veazey’s mother even organized a few herself at Winthrop University in Rock Hill. These were informal affairs that had little to do with the universities themselves, which is probably why the archive team at Lees-McRae has no evidence of them being there at all.
It’s also worth adding a bit of context to a name dropped frequently throughout the early letters: Miss Kennedy. Miss Elisabeth Fronde Kennedy is largely known as being the second Dean of Women for Trinity College (later Duke University), but she also served at Lees-McRae in the same position a few years later. She hosted the Thanksgiving dance in question and also provided an office job for Veazey beginning in the spring semester of 1942. Veazey likely served as a secretary of some sort, although I’ll admit I am not sure of her exact function.
I don’t know exactly what the first meeting was like, but family legend says he was camped on the lawn outside her dorm when he whistled at her and the rest was history. While I can’t debate the whistle, as much as I would like to, a letter dated a full year after that meeting gave some insight to what it was like. On 24 November 1942, just over a month into his deployment, Kay writes:
Backward, oh time — turn backward in thy flight, that we may live again — ! If it were only possible to relive that glorious week of this time last year. Twas then Veazey, that life opened wide its portals that I may gaze again at what lay before us. Never did I realize what I had missed or how much I had missed until you appeared.
It is like strolling down ‘Memory Lane’ to think about our meeting, and all too few days that we had. To try and visualize and recount step by step everything we said, all that we did, is a worthwhile topic.
Do you remember when we first arrived in the dead of night, the roaring of cycles and deep throated rumble of the “iron horses” we were riding — How Jay and I wandered thru the halls, scaring your co-students by our strange appearance — the beautiful day that followed — when the darkness had disappeared and the morning’s light was clear — the air clean and invigorating — and how amazed we were to find ourselves situated in the middle of a college campus — high up in the mountains.
Remember how I was supposed to be doing motor maintenance — and you came by for the first time — on your merry way to the Post office or the tea shoppe — and I looked at you — but you seemed to see me not at all. But it was then that I came to look forward to frequent visits down the hill and I always managed to be there when you came and felt so disappointed when you didn’t.
I could feel my heart pounding just a bit faster, an empty feeling in my stomach and I tried so hard to appear casual when I first spoke to you. I didn’t realize then — although in some dark recess of my brain — something registered — that this was what I wanted — what I was looking for — and had found it without realization of the fact.
And after speaking to you — I wondered so much as to just how you felt — as to what manner of person this was — needing a shave — in dirty grease stained coveralls where I had the gall to talk to you. I tried so hard to hard to keep in boots and breeches after that — always looking for an excuse to see you or look for you — and after finding you — being at a loss for words.
Remember the bridge games we had — the bull sessions and dear Ol’ Miss Kennedy (Bless her curly head). It was fun wasn’t it. And then the night of our Thanksgiving date — the party that was given. It really was our first date — and I don’t think I even danced with you or so much as held your hand. And how Jay and I got up on the stage and sang and just about embarrassed Miss Kennedy to death — as well as making our Lieutenant feel anything but comfortable. And all too soon it was over — we had to leave — and I can remember asking you to write — a promise which you gave — and perhaps very gravely we shook hands — you were standing on the landing outside the dean’s office and I wanted to kiss you awfully bad but didn’t dare — so it was just goodbye.
The next few weeks went by rather swiftly and I thought of you often — and when we got back to our base camp — I dropped you a card. Remember the “Vivienne”? And then thru the correspondence that followed during the next few months — I realized that Cupid’s arrow had been true in its flight and I was hopelessly in love and liked it.
Reading that letter, I realized I wasn’t just reconstructing their story; I was following Kay’s own attempt to preserve it. His version of that week, written from across an ocean, is as detailed and present as if it had just happened. A year had passed since their meeting, and already it lived in him like something sacred. Eighty years later, reading his words, I felt it too.
Sometimes I don’t know why I’m trying to write this story when it has become clearer and clearer that Kay has already written it all for me. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I’m not writing their story so much as I’m listening for it, piecing it together from what was never meant to survive: heat-warped paper, hearts written bare in wartime.
Maybe my part isn’t to tell it better, just to keep holding it. I think about the pages themselves. The way they darkened, curled, endured. The way his voice, nearly a century gone, still sounds like it’s reaching for her.
This isn’t just memory. It’s presence, reaching across what’s been lost.
