Correspondence a Time Machine for Memories

Dan Wolf was time traveling.

He was reading old letters, the product of a robust correspondence begun in the ‘70s when he and James Young were roommates at UC Santa Cruz.

From an overflowing box, Wolf fished out a letter from Young--postmarked Santa Cruz, May 21, 1979--and he hurtled back in time.

. . . (Saw) “Manhattan.� Boy was it good. . . . The only thing I don’t like about it is that nothing I can say about it is going to sound very original. (Like it was a perfect balance between “Interiors� and “Annie Hall.� ) A little of everything (Woody Allen) does so well. . . . Wow, Gershwin . . . wow, black and white . . . Jim

Eyes brightening and mustache expanding with a smile, 42-year-old Wolf says: “A letter, it’s the closest thing to a time machine there is.�

A voice chirped from his computer at the Walt Disney Co. in Burbank, where Wolf is director of public affairs. “You’ve got mail,� it says, signaling an electronic message. But Wolf ignored it to talk about the real thing, something touched by his hands and those of his dear friend.

“A sense of reflection, thoughtfulness, assessment of yourself and the person you’re writing to--almost all go into a letter,� says Wolf.

Says Young, 41, an English professor 3,000 miles away at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst: “Not even our families get this voice that is in our letters, a voice of intimacy and sharing we’ve developed since 1972.�

For Wolf, Young and other atypical Americans who still regularly write letters, personal correspondence is a high-touch antidote to high-tech living.

They could phone, fax or even visit. Instead, when they want to say what matters most at a given time--from the mundane to the monumental--they write a letter, slip it in an envelope, drop it in a box and wait for a reply.

It’s a process that has changed little over time--a back-and-forth kind of personal storytelling.

And its significance remains just as important as when stamps cost a penny: Letters have saved lives, eased isolation, served as a cherished source of information and consolation.

Jerusalem--Feb. 19, 1983

This land of your forefathers . . . is in real trouble. Jim

During their 20-year correspondence, Dan Wolf and James Young have written about big topics: war and peace, sex and love, birth and death, politics, religion and careers. And they’ve written about the ordinary: what they ate for breakfast, TV shows they watch and good ol’ gossip.

In his letters to Young, Wolf recorded his 19th-Century-like romance with Elly Greenspoon. Now they have a son and a daughter, who have become the subjects of many letters.

In 1987, Wolf’s sister died of cancer. When he first wrote Young about that, Wolf cried and tears fell onto the pages he would send to his friend.

Over the two decades, Young went from being called Jimmy, to Jim, to James. In his letters, there was the gnashing of teeth when he was divorced in 1981. And there was celebration when he converted to Judaism and later married Lori Friedman. Now his letters discuss the frustration of their not being able to conceive a child.

Through it all, Young and Wolf corresponded, whether by hand, by typewriter, by office or laptop computer. Wolf says: “Something can be totally mundane at the time but become so precious years later, just because it was written down in a letter.�

Writing letters, Ben Tang says, may have saved his life.

During China’s Cultural Revolution in the late ‘60s and ‘70s--when legions of city dwellers were sent to labor in the countryside--Tang cut timber in the mountains.

As a teen-ager 2,000 miles from his Shanghai home, he regularly wrote to friends and family. “We treated letters as a part of our spiritual life,� says Tang, now 40 and an Asian studies researcher at the Claremont Institute. “Without letters, we might have committed suicide.�

He especially wrote to two friends. “We comforted each other by writing Chinese classical poetry.�

When Tang came to the United States six years ago, he was--like many new immigrants--writing almost daily to his family. “When I write letters, I put in my heart, my passion, my worries, my love, my hatred,� he says, adding that he would feel uncomfortable to express such a range of emotion over the phone.

In his modest Alhambra apartment, he now writes on a computer complete with Chinese characters, keeping in touch with 50 correspondents in France, Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China. “The letters often are very simple. During the Cultural Revolution, they were always long.�

New York--Jan. 8, 1985

. . . I’ll be looking for a computer to buy at the end of this month, when both IBM and Apple are supposed to be coming out with new models. . . . Jim

For 67-year-old Sumi Seo Seki of Long Beach, one of her most prized possessions is a postcard from her equivalent of the Cultural Revolution.

On a November day in 1942 in a barracks in Arkansas, Sumi Seo, then 17, wrote on the card she had bought in Arizona. Her train had passed through the state on its way to an internment camp for Japanese-Americans.

She wrote to a San Pedro friend:

Dearest Nellie,

Greetings from Arkansas. I was expecting to hear from all my classmates. No such luck. This place is boring as hell. I go to the forest to pick nuts to kill time. Our school will start this week. We will all speak like Arkies. We will have white teachers. Xmas greetings. . . . Sumi Seo

She never heard from Nellie.

Decades later, a friend explained why Seki got little mail. The mailman, after seeing a Japanese name on the return address, would warn: Don’t write back. Letters aid the enemy.

Recently, Nellie’s brother found the card and gave it to Seki. It serves as a totem of that time and of the letters, answered and unanswered. “We were so lonesome,� says Seki. “A letter in those days, in the camps, was like gold.�

New York--Jan. 29, 1990

. . . We see lots of movies (you’ll like “Enemies� and “Glory�). . . . (We) eat out several times a week, get home in time for L.A. Law (Did you ever hear of Tourette Syndrome before?), and wait for the recession like everyone else . . . . J & L

Even in an age of cheaper, better phone service, Sierra Madre author Merrill Joan Gerber prefers to write rather than call her friend Cynthia Ozick, a heavyweight in New York literary circles.

Through a correspondence of hundreds of letters that began in 1983, they have become, Ozick says, “the closest imaginable friends.� Gerber, 54 and 10 years younger than Ozick, says: “It’s like we’re sisters.� Yet they have actually visited with one another only three or four times.

If a letter can be a short story, then Ozick’s latest card was a hurried poem, in response to the news of illnesses in Gerber’s family. Gerber said the note touched her deeply.

Written in Ozick’s microscopic longhand and jammed on a plain 19-cent card, it began:

Four letters unanswered by me! (Except by moans and moans and cries.) I can’t believe these Job-like events. This card is a stopgap to tell you I receive, I hear, my heart pounds. I am with you .

The intense correspondence of Barbara Shulgold and Lynne Sipiora grew out of isolation. They knew little of one another in 1985, except that they both wanted to get pregnant and couldn’t.

Shulgold, living in San Francisco, had written a letter to the editor to an infertility newsletter. Sipiora, living in the Midwest, responded.

Their new book, “Dear Barbara, Dear Lynne. The True Story of Two Women in Search of Motherhood,� documents how they became ultimate pen pals.

“It was hard for me to communicate with other people,� says Shulgold, 49. “But this correspondence was a safe way to do it.

Letter-writing “is a different kind of communication . . . slower and more thoughtful. I remember leaning against the typewriter for a half-hour and just thinking. You can’t do that in person or on the phone. You have to explain: ‘I’m thinking.’ �

Sipiora, 37, says: “There was a lot of ritualistic behavior in writing and receiving the letters, comforting rituals. I wrote on legal pads. I was always at my desk. I got my pen and had a cup of tea.�

Now Shulgold and Sipiora each have two children and, Sipiora says, “no time to write.� But they still do, if not as frequently.

Los Angeles--Aug. 9, 1991

(For Young’s 40th birthday)

Dear Jimmy,

Well surfer boy, your time has come. It’s time to start getting used to expressions such as: You look good for your age. . . . Dan