Robert Coles in his I...
Illustration
Robert Coles in his Harvard Diary comments on his father's practice each Sunday afternoon of taking his Parker pen in hand and writing long letters to his family still living in Yorkshire, England. The family included his father, his sisters and his brother. The letters contained not just the latest news of the day but also his father's most intimate thoughts. He valued his family across the seas not just as blood kin but as spiritual kin, too.
On Sunday afternoon, December 7, 1941, when Coles was a boy of 11 his father's letter writing was interrupted by a phone call informing him that Pearl Harbor had just been bombed by the Japanese. His response was to sit down and write another page to his letter. When young Coles asked his mother why his dad was so stubbornly devoted to his letter writing, his mother replied:
"These letters are your father's way of keeping a diary - thinking about things and trying to make sense of them through the written word."
Paul used his own letters as a kind of diary to reveal his inner thoughts and wrote words of encouragement to his "spiritual kin" in Thessalonica.
- Clarke
On Sunday afternoon, December 7, 1941, when Coles was a boy of 11 his father's letter writing was interrupted by a phone call informing him that Pearl Harbor had just been bombed by the Japanese. His response was to sit down and write another page to his letter. When young Coles asked his mother why his dad was so stubbornly devoted to his letter writing, his mother replied:
"These letters are your father's way of keeping a diary - thinking about things and trying to make sense of them through the written word."
Paul used his own letters as a kind of diary to reveal his inner thoughts and wrote words of encouragement to his "spiritual kin" in Thessalonica.
- Clarke
