Grandparents
1910 – 1988
US Navy, WWII
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About
Samuel wrote home every week of the war. The letters — folded, salt-stained, numbered — are the spine of this archive, and the reason the family began collecting at all.
Matching submissions are combined into one memory, with each contributor's wording, name and date kept beside it. There's no limit on how many people can add to Samuel Whitfield's page.
“He numbered every letter so we would know if one was lost at sea. Not one was.”
Eleanor Grace Whitfield· 14 March 1998
“Two hundred and twelve letters home, each one numbered in the top corner in pencil.”
Marisol Reyes· 2 November 2004
“I read them all in one night when I was nineteen. They still smell of salt.”
Aaron Reyes· 9 June 2016
“He agreed to the tape recorder only if I sat beside him. You can hear me turn the pages.”
Ruth Adair· 30 May 1981
Anyone with an account can add a memory of Samuel Whitfield — there's no limit on how many people contribute.
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“Every hull he laid carried J.W. burned into the keel, where only the water would see it.”
Samuel Whitfield· 12 September 1954
“A shrimper in Darien showed me the mark on a boat still working in 1998.”
Marisol Reyes· 19 July 2011
About Marta Lindqvist
“Nine hundred and twelve names in her own hand, and the weather on each birthday.”
Samuel Whitfield· 1 December 1959
“Half the county was written into that leather book before it was written anywhere else.”
Eleanor Grace Whitfield· 6 April 2001
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