To Elsie With Love

To Elsie With Love

by

J. Wesley Sullivan

including

Diary of a Wartime Bride

by

Elsie Jane Sullivan

* * *

Edited by William L. Sullivan

Originally published by Navillus Press

* * *

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 1993 Mary E. Lowd

(www.marylowd.com)

* * *

-- To Elsie With Love --

Introduction:

On the afternoon of our 49th wedding anniversary, Elsie told me she had a favor to ask. In an expansive mood, I said, I'll grant you anything.

You'd better be careful, she replied.

Caught up in the euphoria of the moment, I reassured her, Today, my dear, whatever you want is yours.

I was a bit taken aback when she said, I want you to write a book. I want you to write me the story of our marriage.

She explained that as her memory fades, she fears losing the remembrance of our years together. The book would keep those stories alive for her.

It's not been uncommon in our marriage for Elsie to introduce an idea and for me to run with it. But to write a book? I've spent my career as an editorial writer and columnist. I run out of thoughts after 700 words.

Later that night at dinner, partly as a means of screwing up my courage, I told friends I was writing a book on our marriage for Elsie, as a present to her on our 50th wedding anniversary. To cinch my commitment, I mentioned my pledge to Elsie in my next Sunday's newspaper column. Now there was no turning back. I had no choice but to sit down at my computer the next morning and type.

I needn't have worried. As soon as I put my hands to the keyboard, the story came pouring out. I hadn't known a book had been bottled up inside me. It took Elsie to take off the lid.

Research was as easy as opening our scrapbooks all twenty-seven of them. Every few years Elsie had mounted our photos and other memorabilia in another scrapbook. It was as though she had captured the stories of our life together in the pages of those scrapbooks. And now I was releasing all the stories to live again in the pages of To Elsie With Love.

What I wrote was largely autobiographical, so I was delighted when sheer coincidence turned up a long forgotten diary Elsie had kept during the first year of our marriage. Rich with her own perspective, this treasure from the turbulent World War II era has been included here in its proper chronological place between chapters 2 and 5.

Chapter X, an unnumbered chapter near the end of the book, also requires some explanation. As my work on the book neared completion, I realized I had told the story of our marriage and of my life without explaining the underlying thinking and philosophy I used in guiding that life. Suddenly it seemed as ridiculous as if I'd described an automobile without ever lifting the hood to show people the engine. So, with humility and foreboding, I added Chapter X. The X reflects that It doesn't fit chronologically into the rest of the text. Yet without it, the rest would lose much of its meaning.

As our 49th year together progressed, Elsie's illness became more and more disabling. Though we still shared long walks and wonderful times, Elsie gradually had to give up much that she had once enjoyed.

It's been said that faith is the direction our feet start moving when we find we are loved. I thought about that one night recently when I found Elsie pulling a blanket over me as the night air grew cooler. The kind of love Elsie and I have shared isn't dependent upon being loved in return. It isn't dependent upon what we do for each other. It's the kind of unconditional love that faith can be built upon. It's the kind of ultimate human relationship that sets the feet moving in the right direction.

Today, Elsie, on our golden anniversary, this book is dedicated to you.

J. Wesley Sullivan

Salem, March 15, 1993

CHAPTER 1: A College Romance

Elsie looked surprised when I introduced myself to her. Little wonder.

No one formally introduced themselves to one each other in the Shack, as we called the basement of the Journalism School at the University of Oregon.

But I had planned out this meeting for days. It had taken on far greater importance in my mind than the casual conversational gambits that launched acquaintanceships among the other freshmen reporters on the staff of the Oregon Daily Emerald.

If I had the power to pluck a picture from the mind's eye and place it on a page, I could demonstrate how clearly I see her as she was then, more than fifty-two years ago.

She was seated at a desk studying, with the light from the window coming over her left shoulder. A square cut to her jaw and her glasses gave a practical look to a beautiful face, with high cheek bones, a tiny nose, and brown curls across a high forehead. She wore a green sweater. She sat looking up at me, an open, inquisitive look on her face.

Having planned for so long what I intended to say, I'm sure it sounded stilted.

My introduction to Elsie started two weeks before, at my home in Portland, when we invited my high school journalism teacher, Miss Agatha Harding, to dinner.

In the conversation following the meal, she said, There's a girl at the university I think you'd like. Her name is Elsie Jane Brownell. She's from Grants Pass.

Miss Harding taught journalism at Grants Pass High School before coming to Portland to teach at Franklin High School, where I met her.

She was in one of my journalism classes and became editor of the high school paper, Miss Harding added. She comes from a nice family.

The mention of Elsie Brownell brought to mind the trim figure of a girl I'd seen on campus. Yes, indeed, I would like to meet that girl.

Among the many new worlds unfolding before me in my first year at college was the world of dating and all the ritual and protocol that went with it. My social life at high school centered around the school newspaper and the gang of kids associated with it.

Sure, there were girls in the gang. I envied the more socially sophisticated boys who dated them. I didn't have the money or the nerve. What with working to make enough money to attend college and my natural shyness where girls were concerned, I'd barely managed to take a girl to a high school football game once or twice.

But in Campbell Co-op, the house in which I lived on campus, there were house dances, exchange desserts, and other social functions that required going out with girls.

I was as enthused about this as any of the other new and wonderful aspects of life that opened up to me when I carried my battered suitcase up the front steps of Campbell Co-op at the opening of school.

I never had danced and had no idea how to do it, but that didn't stop me from inviting a blonde girl from the Shack to our house dance that fall term.

She was kind enough to show me some basic steps, enough so I didn't disgrace myself. I had a great time, although her regular boyfriend probably didn't appreciate my borrowing his date for the evening. Fall term passed without my having singled out any girl as the object of my social intentions.

Frankly, my first priority was establishing myself with the school newspaper.

Clearly, the suggestion from Miss Harding opened a door into an interesting area of life, but one which I was reluctant to enter into unaided.

Even though I was armed with an introduction from Miss Harding, my first conversation with Elsie was stiff and tenuous. It gives some idea of my shyness about all things connected with girls that I didn't ask her for a date.

Fate had to give our relationship a little nudge in that area. It turned out that Susan Campbell Hall, the dormitory in which Elsie was staying, had scheduled an exchange dessert with Campbell Co-op. This meant that Susie Campbell women would chose men in our house to eat dessert with and to dance. Elsie chose me.

She didn't know it at the time, but I had decided she would be my girlfriend. It was all part of the opening up of my life as I emerged from the cocoon of a Depression-plagued, single parent childhood into the warmth and open ended optimism of campus life. The war in Europe was a small cloud on a far horizon in the winter and spring of 1940.

What was near and real were the friendships I was forming in Campbell Co-op and my nightly forays into the newsroom of the Oregon Daily Emerald. I apprenticed on the copy desk, wrote headlines, and cadged news story assignments.

Academic classes were opening my mind to new ideas, but my main focus of attention was on what was going on in my life outside the classroom. My new found enchantment with Elsie formed an important part of that pattern.

Being with her was easy. She also worked on the student paper. Before many weeks, I was night copy editor, sitting in the slot of the huge, battered copy desk handing out copyreading and headline assignments to the copy editors on the rim.

I made Elsie my assistant. She sat below me, keeping track of the stories and the amount of copy we were sending to the pressroom.

We had some classes together. I sat next to her - a distracting influence. In one economics class we were publicly humiliated by the professor, who stopped the class to call attention to our whispered conversations.

I must be candid. I was the initiator of such distractions. Elsie says my enthusiasm is one of the features she most enjoys in me. This was her first exposure to that enthusiasm, as it centered on her. It must have been a heady experience, to have someone, even a tall, skinny redhead, devising so many ways to amuse and divert her.

Life on campus was tightly restricted for girls. Most houses enforced evening study hours. Girls had to be home by 9:30 on weeknights and not much later on weekends. Dating during the week was confined to walking the girl home from the library or perhaps sharing a Coke at the College Side, the student hangout next to the campus.

Dividing a five cent, five ounce Coke or a nickel donut was about all my limited budget could afford, but that didn't dampen the enjoyment of the occasion.

It must have been mid February or early March when I first took Elsie on a full fledged date, walking her to the movies on a Saturday night to downtown Eugene. On the way home, we stopped on a bridge across the Millrace.

I'd planned this for some time - looked forward to it. For the first time, I took her in my arms, and kissed her, lightly, once. I stood there with her in my arms for a few moments. Then I walked her home to her dormitory.

Months, or years, later, recalling that event, Elsie wondered why I'd just kissed her once, lightly. This wasn't how necking, as it was called in those days, was done.

At the time, she didn't realize the importance or the significance of that kiss to me.

Later, I wrote her a poem about that night. It went:

Sonnet to Her

She was lovely as she stood here

Leaning o'er the rustic railing

Smiling at the waters flailing

At the banks. Ah, she was fair.

She turned her eyes a moonbeam caught them,

Left them limpid left them brighted,

Left her features further lighted

As the moonlight stole across them.

Queen of grace and charm, she lingered,

More radiant still amid the blue,

As the silent shadows fingered

Through her hair a vision true.

Oft I wonder, does she know?

She won a heart there long ago.

I still can't write those words without tears coming to my eyes. By the time I wrote that poem, I'd started writing a doggerel poem on the front page of the Emerald newspaper every day. They were light, flip verses, designed to amuse.

The poem I wrote for her was serious.

Winter melded into spring and I went blissfully along expanding my horizons. While my dancing wasn't varied or accomplished, I was light on my feet, kept true to the rhythm, and, again, made up in enthusiasm what I lacked in training.

This was the era of the Big Bands. Such legends as Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Kay Kyser came to the campus. I ignored the strain on my finances and invited Elsie to the dances, even plunking down 25 cents for the required corsage.

In my single minded devotion to Elsie, it never occurred to me I might not be the only one vying for her attention and affection. It was a shock, therefore, to find she'd already been invited to a dance.

Not only that, she had been dating someone, a Bob Caldwell, all during fall term. It must have been quite a chore for her to keep us separated for as long as she did. I saw this Caldwell a time or two, a short, sullen fellow. He probably thought I was sullen looking also.

Caldwell or no, by the end of spring term I'd made it plain to Elsie that I thought of her as my girl.

She headed for Grants Pass for the summer. I went to Portland, desperately in search of a job to get money to return to school the following year.

Today, it seems almost impossible that an entire year at the university could be had for $350. That included three terms of tuition, at $30 apiece, and room and board at the co-op house for $21 a month. I'd financed my first year by drawing on the money I'd saved from my high school paper route. My mother put up $15 a month for that first year, but she couldn't continue that.

A week or two of futile job hunting at the start of the summer showed me how slim my chances were of getting enough money to start the second year. And then I was offered a chance to work nights at a film processing plant.

I worked twelve to fourteen hours a night, seven days a week, at 25 cents an hour, the going rate for entry level employment.

The firm processed rolls of film collected from drug stores all over the Portland area. One man stripped the film in a darkroom and hung it on racks for processing. When the developed film emerged on the racks, I waited until they were blown dry, cut them down, and, working at a table lighted from below, I cut the rolls into individual negatives with a foot operated knife. I put them into their envelopes to be ready for the printers in the morning.

The speed at which the films emerged from the processing room determined how fast I had to work to keep up. When the racks were fully loaded, I became a study in time and motion efficiency to maintain the pace.

Instead of finding it monotonous, I found it exhilarating. I prided myself in how adept I became. The key to keeping up was whisking the rolls of film through the cutter, slicing between each negative with lightning speed. One miscut and a negative was sliced in half. I kept a few blank pieces of film near at hand to use as replacements when I misgauged the knife. There were remarkably few miscuts.

I had little time for social life that summer. The one girl I dated only made me realize how much more I enjoyed being with Elsie.

By the end of September, I was back at the university, with Elsie, and with Bob Caldwell.

Over the summer, Elsie had given our relationship much thought. Her parents encouraged her not to get too serious about any one boy. So I was put on notice, early on, that she would be dating Caldwell and, perhaps, others, along with me.

This may have been disturbing, but it wasn't discouraging. I promptly put in my bid for one or two of the upcoming dances. Elsie always has been the most fair person I've known.

She would accept the first invitation to a dance. Simply by getting there first, I had my pick of the upcoming events.

I'm sure she must have told Caldwell the same ground rules.

That's when Bob Caldwell made a strategic mistake. Just as I was, he was smitten by Elsie. This intelligent, charming girl, with an excellent figure to match, obviously would be an ideal companion through life.

I can almost feel sorry for Caldwell. He had been dating Elsie since near the start of the previous year. He had reason to believe she was interested in him. In his fantasy time, he may even have convinced himself she was in love with him.

He had, in his own mind, seen this relationship developing to the point where it could be made permanent. But as the new school year started, not only was she dating someone else, she was determined to continue playing the field.

It was too much for Bob. He asked Elsie to marry him.

Elsie hadn't dated much in high school. She was known as the serious sister, as compared with her more vivacious younger sister Nancy, who was blonde, cute and more outgoing.

Nancy had her pick of boyfriends. Elsie silently resented the fact that her parents allowed Nancy to date and to have other privileges at an earlier age. It would be a full generation later before Elsie would discover how much easier it is to draw up rules for the first born than to keep those rules in place for the rest of the brood.

What a heady experience it was for this girl from Grants Pass to come to the university where she not only began dating but had boys competing for her attention. And then to have a serious proposal of marriage.

It wasn't something to be taken lightly. Bob pleaded his love and devotion for her. Implicit but unstated in his proposal was an ultimatum. She had this opportunity to marry him. If she refused, his pride would be hurt. He probably would stop asking her for dates.

His petition was doomed from the start. Marriage to anyone would mean getting off this marvelous campus merry- go-round, dating, going to dances, working at the Emerald, living with roomies with whom you could share confidences.

Elsie turned Bob Caldwell down. At the time, of course, I knew nothing of what was going on. All I knew was that I had asked Elsie for dates to all the important dances for the rest of the term. While this irritated her, sealing off other opportunities, her fairness doctrine compelled her to accept my offers.

Not only did it become apparent to me that Caldwell no longer was in the picture, I soon recognized how difficult it would be for her to start seriously dating anyone else.

Elsie was becoming known as my girl.

Through much of our sophomore year, Elsie kept up the pretense that she was open to other dating. But I was monopolizing her time, and it was fun. We were dancing better together all the time. We even won the dancing contest at the Campbell Clubhouse dance. (We'd changed the name from Co-op to Club because it sounded more sophisticated.)

I'd also discovered a way around the closing hour restrictions at the women's houses. (By this time Elsie had joined Alpha Gamma Delta sorority.)

Working on the Daily Emerald not only meant writing stories and headlines, but going to the press building and setting those headlines into type. It meant closing out the pages with the printers. It could take until 1 a.m.

Obviously, if the girls on the newspaper staff were to participate in this process, they would have to stay out beyond weekend closing hours. The trick, then, was to get a girlfriend who worked on the paper, so you could have late dates. After all, the housemother couldn't know whether you had come straight home from the newspaper.

This was ready made for my dating with Elsie.

After we took the girls home following putting the paper to press, the men would go to downtown Eugene for hamburgers and the singing of rowdy songs. We called our informal group the 3 O'Clock Club. I still have my membership card.

Spring term at the U is a phrase that, for anyone in our era of college, has special meaning. It brings to mind those heady days when the weather was sunny, the grass was green, and the campus was alive with romance and the joy of living. It was the time of crowning campus queens, of the gala floats that competed for prizes and attention on the Millrace during Junior Weekend.

I was initiated into Sigma Delta Chi, the journalism honorary, that sophomore spring. I was elected president of my house. I remember walking through the campus one night, under the golden light of a street lamp, and thinking to myself, These are the golden years. They never can be repeated. Nothing in my life will get any better than this.

Life has brought more riches than I ever could have dreamed of as a nineteen-year-old. I've enjoyed events and relationships that I wouldn't trade even for those halcyon days of college when I was just discovering life. But I was right. They were the golden years, never to be repeated.

My happiness with Elsie continued to grow. I shared in the visits her family made to the campus, and enjoyed being made to feel comfortable and welcome.

Spring term at the U included, of course, canoeing on the Millrace. I wasn't about to be left out of any part of campus life. So I rented a canoe one brisk but sunny afternoon, and we loaded our gear and a blanket into the boat and set off upstream.

I'd never been in a canoe before. I was six-foot-three and as poorly adapted to canoes as a giraffe. Elsie was a veteran of summer camps and of canoeing, but I, as the male involved, felt compelled to take the lead. Things went fairly well as we made our way upstream, until we tried to turn the canoe around in the narrow waterway.

The fact that the canoe was broadside to the current didn't seem to pose any threat, until the current bore us down on low, overhanging branches. Suddenly, before I was aware of the hazard, we were capsized, and all our gear was floating in the water.

As I splashed around trying to gather our belongings and get the canoe upright, the feeling of humiliation was far greater than that of danger. My mind has blissfully removed many of the details of the next few minutes, but I clearly recall the ignominious trek we made, sopping wet, across the campus, hoping desperately we would not encounter friends.

I figured if our relationship could survive that, it could surmount anything.

By the end of spring term Elsie was wearing my Sigma Delta Chi pin. Pinning was the equivalent of going steady.

When I went home that second summer to begin my twelve to fourteen hour nights at the photo company, I no longer was seeking female companionship in my few free hours.

What extra time I did have was spent with my best friend, Ray Schrick.

Ray and I cemented our relationship at the Franklin High Post. Ray also was one of Miss Harding's protégés. He and I went to the university together and both jumped into activity at the newspaper there.

He was exceptionally bright, winning the Koyle Cup as the outstanding scholar on the campus. By the end of our second year, it was obvious we were on a collision course for editorship of the campus newspaper, unless one or the other changed direction.

Nothing could allow that collision to happen. So, while he became managing editor of the newspaper for his junior year, I switched focus and became managing editor of the yearbook, the Oregana.

War clouds were gathering in that summer of 1941. Adolph Hitler held all of Europe under his sway. I recall the nights Ray and I climbed to Washington Park in Portland and sat watching the fog swirl in over the city below as we tried to envision our future.

It was hard to keep from becoming depressed. I can still feel the chill, not just of the fog but of something far deeper as we contemplated how our lives might be impacted by events half the world away.

Even so, it still was possible to imagine that somehow we would be spared until that Sunday morning in December when, while walking home from church in downtown Eugene, we heard people talking about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

I wasn't quite sure where Pearl Harbor was, but it was obvious our country had been attacked. The numbing reaction of those next few hours, the panic, are not easily forgotten. One or two men in our house quit school that very day and enlisted.

As house president, I was responsible for blacking out the windows that first night. Fortunately, our house dance earlier that term included use of black drapery material. So we had the finest blackout curtains on campus.

Overnight, the atmosphere of the campus changed. What could we do to support the war effort? We gathered scrap. We held war bond rallies. And underneath it all we wondered what was going to happen to us.

If many of the details of my association with Elsie during that junior year have dimmed, it is because we became comfortable with our relationship. I now could assume that Elsie would be my escort.

I remember inviting her to one function that required we have dinner downtown before the dance. I took her to the best restaurant in town, wondering whether she would order the 35 cent dinner or the 50 cent dinner. Finances still were a major concern. I don't recall, by the way, what her decision was.

Along with many other young men, I began casting about for ways I could control my own destiny in the war. Finally, I was successful in enlisting in an Army Air Corps Cadet program that would lead to my becoming a flier. But it also was scheduled to defer my active enlistment until I could graduate a year from then.

This was important to me because I had been appointed editor of the Oregana for my senior year. I wanted to complete that assignment. As usual, my extra curricular work rated higher on my list of priorities than my studies, although by now I had bottomed out on grades and was making my way back towards a cumulative three point average.

My prospective pay as editor of the yearbook, a munificent $360,