Young and seeking bargain items that would go nicely in her new apartment, Wendy Drake took her chances on an estate sale. When a blue-topped box caught her eye, she got better than objects for her new digs. She took a peek to find the first of her Thousand Letters adventure and bought the box containing letters written between 1899 and 1943. She made an offer, took the box home and put in a closet where it stayed while she was happily busy with her job.
When she got to opening it, she found a world that you would have to call overwhelming in personal detail. Wendy’s experience as an endurance athlete held her in good stead, for endurance and diligence was exactly what she needed to sort through and make sense of all these letters.
Her next adventure was finding letters from her grandparents to each other written during WWII. Extra treasure because her grandparents were Charles and Helen Cooke the well-known writers whose articles you may have read for decades in the New Yorker magazine.
To listen to Wendy talk about these letters, her journey through the world of found letters is to see the power that letters once abandoned and then recovered have; they are portals to worlds unimagined.
Wendy, on her Love Letters Live Youtube episode, shares discoveries she made about her own family is a lesson in courage in the face of startling realizations. It takes a woman of stouthearted candor to bring to light difficult truths that will, no doubt, help others to walk a difficult path. Wendy Drake is that woman.
She has collected her experiences into her book, Running to Thousand Letters. And, to join her in Wendy’s ongoing trek through letters and life, we invite you to take a look at her Youtube channel that holds secrets, triumphs, delights and, yes, some unasked for realities. I was personally overwhelmed at the depth and breadth of what Wendy had to offer; you may be, too.
