A bunch of second-hand World War II love letters was the first clue in solving the mystery of who wrote them
Two friends found correspondence between two teens separated by war, and couldn’t rest without knowing what had become of them
On the way home from a weekend road trip to the Smoky Mountains in the southeastern United States, two friends, Lindsy Wolke and Megan Grant, found themselves browsing the relic room of Smoky Mountain Knife Works in eastern Tennessee.
Among the fossils and old currency, they stumbled upon a few handwritten letters from the second world war. The love letters, written from 1944 to 1946, were so absorbing – and the two friends stood there reading them for so long – that an employee came by and joined them, becoming equally enthralled.
“We were sitting there for what felt like forever,” said Grant, 24, of Clarksville, Tennessee. “But we couldn’t read them fast enough.”
Wolke and Grant bought all 21 letters, at US$4 a piece, and hurried to the car to continue reading the love story of Elias Maxwell and Ilaine Murray. At the time, Elias, 18, was stationed in Hawaii and Japan on the USS Rankin, and Ilaine, 19, was back in their hometown of Blackwood, New Jersey, about 15 miles from Philadelphia.
“The notes were just so beautifully written,” said Wolke, 24, who also lives in Clarksville. “Reading them just made your heart melt. It was like reading a book.”
“It was way better than any book I’ve ever read,” Grant said.
