Friday, February 17, 2006

Rebecca Buffington
   Bigfork High School

“I loved doing this project,” said Bigfork’s Rebecca Buffington. “It was much more interesting and fun than the 20-page research paper on global warming that I just finished for another class.”

When Rebecca’s teacher, Mary Sullivan, assigned the class a research project, Rebecca was pretty sure she knew what she wanted to focus on. Her mother’s family possessed letters that her grandparents wrote to each other during World War II. The problem was getting those letters.

The letters are precious family heirlooms. They’re kept in a safety deposit box in Seattle where Rebecca’s aunt lives. When Rebecca’s mother called her sister to see about using the letters for a research project, she “didn’t want to give them up,” Rebecca said. “She didn’t entirely trust me with the letters. My mom talked her into it by telling her that this wasn’t some Mickey Mouse project, that this was real research. My aunt sent us copies of the letters.”

“The letters were wonderful,” Rebecca said. “I never met my grandfather, and now I feel like I know him a little. I knew my grandmother—she died a few years ago—but I obviously didn’t know her as a young woman in love. The letters gave a whole new dimension to the grandma I grew up with.”

“What I liked about these letters is that they were personal love letters instead of letters about battles. I found out that war is not just about the fighting. There’s a personal level, too. War is also about people and relationships.”

Rebecca wrote her essay with classmate Brooke Andrus. “I couldn’t have done this project without Brooke. She writes faster than I do so she took a lot of notes. We went through all of the letters to figure out the focus of our paper, and then we had to do quite a lot of research about what was going on in the world at that time. Most of that research didn’t make it into our paper but believe me, we did it.”

Rebecca learned something about letters during her project. “Families really appreciate having them, and they also add to the historical record. You can add a personal aspect or insight to big, or not so big, events. I’d encourage people to write and save letters.” And Rebecca practices what she preaches. She still has the notes she passed to her friends in seventh grade.

Rebecca’s and Brooke’s essay: Love Letters from War