Inheriting Their Words: How 300 Letters Led Me to the Grandparents I Never Met
I can’t say I’ve always wanted to be a writer. When I look back at my childhood, I wanted to be a lot of different things over time. The tooth fairy was the first and most prominent goal of mine, but when I realized that not only was there only one singular tooth fairy coupled with the fact that she wasn’t even real, I moved on. I set my sights higher; I wanted to be the first female president. Then an artist. A fashion designer. A lawyer. A diplomat. A copywriter. A dancer. A graphic designer. Writing was always something I did for fun but it really didn’t cross my mind to pursue it seriously (despite my mom repeatedly telling teenaged me to add my complaints to my future memoir).
While part of me would still love to write that memoir, as I do consider my relatively short life to have thus far been more than interesting enough for the average person to enjoy, what I really want to write about is a bit of an older subject: my grandparents. I’ve never met my mom’s parents, as they both died before I was born. For simplicity, I’m going to call them Veazey and Kay, as that’s what they called each other. Kay died the month before my mom’s seventh birthday, and he’s largely been this strong and silent figure looming in the background of her life. His death left Veazey a single mother with six children, which meant she spent most waking hours working to keep the lights on and food on the table. My mom was the youngest of those six, the one with the fewest memories of her father. In her words, she didn’t even know enough to know what to ask about him. She got pretty close to her mom over the years, but when the time came for my mom to become a mother herself, Veazey passed away after a long battle with cancer. She died the same week my mom told her that she was pregnant with yours truly.
I’m named after her. Vivian is becoming more of a popular name again, but when I was growing up, my grandmother was the only other person I knew of to have it. That loss must have weighed on my mother deeply, but in some way, I like to think she passed something on to me — not just her name, but a connection that would reveal itself over time. I always felt close to her in some way, like she was watching over me. I feel like she’s even confirmed it by visiting me in a dream once several years ago. I saw her as an older lady, sitting on a weathered rocking chair, her hands folded neatly in her lap, the soft creak of wood filling the quiet evening air. The house behind her was unfamiliar, but she belonged there, as though she’d been waiting for me. Her voice was gentle but firm, carrying the weight of someone who knew she was right: “I’m always looking out for you, Vivian. I’m always with you. Always have been, always will be.” I told her how much my mom missed her, and she was quick to respond. “Well I’m always with her too, and she’d know that if she just learned how to listen.” I’ve gotten more comfortable talking about this with my aunts and uncles, and even the religious ones seem a bit more convinced I saw her when I get to that last line. I’m told she always had a bold sense of humor.
I’m learning that for myself now. For my mom’s 60th birthday, I reached out to her siblings to ask if anyone had a sample of Veazey’s handwriting so that I could make something with it as a special gift. There’s something so special about having things written in a font unique to every individual, and I know how my mom looked at a grocery list Veazey had left behind. “It’s like she just wrote it,” my mom would sigh. I wanted to be able to give her something a bit more meaningful than a note to buy cat food and wine. Lo and behold, the oldest of the six sat on top of a proverbial goldmine. He had stacks and stacks of letters, some dated as early as 1941, that Veazey and Kay exchanged while he was in the Army. My mom received about 300 of these letters, but it would be a lie to say I didn’t feel like this ended up being a gift for me too. All the letters she received were written by Veazey and stored in a special leather envelope with her name carved on the front. My uncle has thousands more letters, including those written by Kay, but I cannot express just how much I have learned about them from just the one side of this story. It’s led me to dive deep, catch up with my older relatives who had the opportunity to meet them, find endless reports of Kay’s time in the war, and most of all, to connect with those I never got to meet.
While I may have ruined the end of the story, the beginning is one for the books. Kay and Veazey met by sheer chance when his unit was camped out on the lawn outside her college dorm after he was drafted for World War II. He was a twenty-something from the suburban New Jersey side of New York City, stationed for a year’s training at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. Veazey was the daughter of a woman with a penchant for running guesthouses wherever her husband’s travelling job took them. She grew up all over Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas before deciding on heading to Lees-McRae for a pre-nursing program. She was determined to be able to support herself, and Kay was determined to survive and come home. Their spark was instant, and strong enough that Veazey actually ended her relationship with a dreaded “Dear John” type letter to the airman she’d been seeing.
Veazey and Kay dated for about a year before he was summoned overseas, and that’s when the letters really start. It’s interesting, because up until D-Day, all I have is one side of the story. I know what Veazey was doing, what her day to day was like, what she was going through. After D-Day, it becomes mandatory for US Army regiments to keep a unit history, and I’m able to keep track of Kay day by day from the time he landed on Omaha beach to the time he celebrates the German surrender in a small Czech border town. Somewhere in the chaos, Kay must have wondered if he’d ever make it back to her. The letters she had sent were tucked away in his pack, words of love against the gunfire. Later, in Paris, he stood guard as De Gaulle marched victorious, but his war wasn’t over. He served as a platoon leader for a reconnaissance group that worked almost exclusively behind enemy lines. He took prisoners. He killed Nazis. He watched countless friends die. Veazey’s words were the only thing tethering him to a future beyond the battlefield.
Despite the horrors Kay endured, their letters never wavered. Through ink and paper, they clung to each other across an ocean and a war. Long distance relationships are never easy, but especially so when one half of the pair is in constant immediate danger and the only form of communication is backlogged and delayed by two weeks at a minimum. They made do. They survived. I think they both counted on the other’s words to get them through.
This is the story I want to write — not just for them, but for me, for my mother, for the generations that will follow. It’s not just their past — it’s my inheritance, my responsibility. And maybe, in telling it, I’ll find missing pieces of myself too. It’s been an incredible journey so far, and I started this page to invite you to join me as I walk this road. From the people I’ve met to the stories uncovered and the glimpses of history learned, this is the story of how I am getting to know Veazey and Kay.
