Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs

Letters from Arthur Howe, Jr., to Margaret Mayo Burke, his future wife, Sept. 6, 1940 – May 12, 1944. Forward Presented here is a subset of the transcription of some 161 letters written by AH, Jr. during a three and half year long period that proved to be transformative for him, shaping the remainder of his life especially in terms of family, career, and AFS (the American Field Service, now AFS Intercultural Programs). Deleted from what is presented below is content without apparent relevance to AFS or else material of a more personal nature (typically involving the relationship between AH, Jr. and MMB). Where just a portion of a letter has been deleted, the location of the deleted content is marked by “…” MBH appears to have kept the collection essentially intact, with perhaps only a few exceptions indicated by three empty envelopes. Three themes consistently appear throughout these letters: the unfolding relationship between AH, Jr. and MMB, culminating in their marriage on June 17th, 1944; AH, Jr’s’ evolving thinking and musings about big issues such as war, his future career, AFS, democracy, etc.; and rich descriptions of events, people, and places. All three are intertwined, with particular note of how powerfully dependent--one might well say “obsessed”--AH, Jr. was on MMB to get through the difficulties of his two years in war. Just before AH, Jr. died, when asked what of him he thought would endure, he said “memory, and the power of love.” Fortunate for us, AH, Jr. exercised his tremendous intellect by writing—in effect, writing was a key tool he used for thinking things through. And because he was writing to someone with whom he could share his innermost thoughts, unlike any other recipient of his letters, we readers are given tremendous insight into who he was at the time and how he became the person we knew. All letters are presented chronologically, include their envelopes, and are numbered sequentially. In a few cases, letters, after having been read, had clearly been returned to the wrong envelopes, and so every attempt has been made to restore the correct matches of letters to envelopes. I made no special effort to preserve fairly frequent misspellings, except where there was a consistently misspelledArchives word,and such of asAFS the “alot” AmericanIntercultural and “strainnous” Field Programs (the Service latter appearing to mean “strenuous”). I tried to preserve his use of punctuation and grammar as written, but admit to having often converted frequent dashes to periods or commas in the transcription. Occasional words were indecipherable or else physically excised by censors relative to militarily sensitive dates and/or locations, and are indicated as such in brackets immediately following. Also appearing in brackets are occasional explanations of the preceding text, e.g. nicknames and abbreviated references to places. Tom Howe, 20 Sept. 2016 (son of AH, Jr. and MBH) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #24 Friday (No envelope. Highly likely written May 23, 1941, based on various date-specific references.) Dear Peg: … I just received a most distressing note from Rugby [Rugby School, which AH,Jr. attended for a year prior to entering Yale]. Three of the boys I played on the rugby team with are either lost or unaccounted for in R.A.F. operations, and two more members of my house the same. Evidently they are suffering terrible losses in the aerial warfare. It just makes me feel so helpless—I would give anything to help those people in their suffering and trouble, and yet I just couldn’t join one of the forces. Everyday more people around here seem to be dropping out or at least planning to, and joining the army. I think if war comes, I will join one of the ambulance corps. Cord [Meyer, Yale classmate] is all signed up with the marines to be enlisted the second we get into the mess, which I just can’t help feeling is not far off, though I hope & pray we can avoid it. Excuse me for bringing in all this moroseness into a birthday letter, but I just seem to be feeling that way and have to get it off my chest onto somebody.…. Love, Artie ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ #25 (Postmarked May 30, 1941, New Haven, CT) Dear Peg: Just a note to thank you for the pictures and wonderfully prompt and much appreciated letter. The day after writing you, I took a drastic move, but one which I feel is right, and joined up with the British American Ambulance Corps. What the future is now I don’t know. They are not sure about where or how they want to use me just yet, but will let me know soon, I hope. I only wrote Mother and Dad about it a couple of days ago, and I trust it won’t upset them. … Love, Artie ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #27 Archivesand of AFS the AmericanIntercultural Field Programs Service Sunday (Postmarked June 22, 1941, Plymouth, NH, the same day) Dear Peg: Since I last wrote you I have been doing considerable travelling; over to Maine, down to New Haven, to New Jersey, returned to camp [Rockywold-Deephaven Camps, on Squam Lake, NH], and up to Canada two days ago for a little fishing. It is good being at camp again. (How Green Was My Valley) The conference at Oatha on Sebago was wonderful, and they had a group of the finest men I have seen collected anywhere. I had an opportunity to talk about my own plans with a number of men who were there and had only recently returned from work abroad. From there we went back to New Haven for reunion week, and it was truly an amazing exhibit. Jim Howard and I managed the class of 1906 shelf, and I was certainly astounded to see how the old boys could carry on. They kept us going 24 hrs. a day from Saturday thru Wednesday. It was both very good fun and I think very good practical experience. The problems that arose of every imaginable sort and had to be solved gave considerable opportunity for the use of imagination and initiative, and both Jim and I thought it great sport. We had to do everything from keeping off irate wives to handling bootleggers in buying liquor on Sunday.… Love, Artie -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #28 Wed. (Postmarked June 26, 1941, Plymouth, NH, which was a Thurs.) Dear Peg: Suddenly find I have to leave here tomorrow, Thursday; so I am afraid I’ll miss you. I will be in West Orange [AH,Jr’s home, in NJ] till Sunday or Monday however, and if your caravan is by any chance stopping off near there or in N.Y. do let me know. 20 Ridgeway Ave., West Orange, N.J. is the address. Wookie Toll’s sister is getting married next Saturday in your hometown, and Mother and Dad are going down (Dad to perform the ceremony [AH,Jr’s father was a minister]). If I don’t see you again, be good this summer, & write often. Love, Artie P.S. address is: “Solid Comfort”, Beaumaris, Muskoka Lake, Ontario, Canada [family compound of Mellon Family and friends, where AH,Jr. spent the summer tutoring Tom & Henry Armstrong (no known relation) whose family had a place there] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #29 Monday (Postmarked July 8, 1941, Beaumaris, Ont., which was a Tues.) Dear Peg: … I trust that allArchives goes welland with of AFS youthe & AmericanIntercultural all the Burkes. Field I Programsdon’t Service know how I am going to hold out without a glimpse of you for so long, after being so spoiled this winter. Unless the ambulance people call me, which is quite a possibility from a letter I received today, I will be here till September. Everything is so uncertain on that end of things, however I feel more & more certain that I have done the right thing in signing up with them. Dad & Mother & a lot of people I have talked with about it agree that it is probably best, feeling as I do about the situation. Write soon & excuse all my boring discourse. Love, Artie ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #31 Sat. (Postmarked July 24, 1941, Beaumaris, Ont., which was a Thursday) Dear Peg: … Our trip down the river was great fun and packed with thrills. Miles of rapids kept me thinking of how mean we were never to have gotten you on the Housatonic [River], but someday we’ll make up for it. The portages were often fairly long and over very rough country; so it was extremely hard work at times, but the way the river suddenly takes a dive for a hundred yards and then opens up into an absolutely wild lake surrounded by heavy pines with great open rocks coming down to the shore makes it all easy. Never have I seen such beautiful country as far as rivers, lakes, & woods are concerned and the bass fishing was quite phenomenal. Not that we caught big fish, the largest being a little over 2 lbs., but the numbers were large. Almost every cast seemed to produce something, and drifting about in the sunshine fishing in such a place was quite too good to be true. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that most everything in the life of A. Howe Jr. has been that way, and it almost makes me shudder to think of what he owes the rest of the world.… The Ambulance people have me started on a lot of innoculations & things, and inform me that I am one of 40 on a list which has been cut down from 800 volunteers, and of this 40 they will pick 24 to go to Suez at the end of August, so it looks as though things may be stirring.

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