World War I letters from ‘over there’ land here, at Chapman University

In honor of his father’s World War I service in France, a Las Vegas man has donated 104 letters written by his father from the battlefields of that conflict to Chapman University and its
Center for American War Letters
.

It is the largest such donation to the Chapman center, followed by a Vietnam Veteran’s donation of 101 of his wartime correspondences.

“This is a national treasure we want everybody – students, scholars and citizens – to have access to,” said Charlene Baldwin,  dean of Leatherby Libraries, which is helping to catalog, archive and digitize the war letters for online use.

Jay Friedman said he chose to donate his father’s letters, written from September 1916 to November 1918, to the center, confident that they would be preserved and shared with scholars for decades to come.

“I am so happy,” Friedman said, as he presented the bundle of letters to Chancellor Daniele Struppa.

The yellowed stationery pages bearing the graceful handwriting of David Friedman are addressed “Dear Folks” and filled with assurances to “not worry,” gratitude for a fruit cake sent his way, routine details of Army life and wide-eyed wonder at the beautiful women in France. As he pored over some of the letters with Friedman, Struppa assured him that they would be invaluable pieces in the collection.

“What was just your personal story can now be shared and has impact,” Struppa said.

Such a donation was special for both its timeliness as the world marks the
100^th anniversary of World War I
and for its intactness, Baldwin said. Often families will understandably distribute a large batch of war letters as mementoes among descendants. When a set remains intact, though, it offers scholars a deeper picture of the writer’s experience and the window of time in which he or she served, she said.

The Center for American War Letters is a unique and extensive manuscript collection of previously unpublished war letters from every American conflict, beginning with handwritten missives composed during the Revolutionary War and continuing up to emails sent from Iraq and Afghanistan. The center is directed by Chancellor’s Fellow
Andrew Carroll
, editor of several
New York Times
bestsellers, including
War Letters
,
Letters of a Nation
, and
Behind the Lines
.
War Letters
inspired the critically acclaimed
PBS documentary
of the same name, and the audio version of the book was nominated for a Grammy in the Spoken Word category.