Dear Tom Cole:
I'm aware that you retired from
Arizona State some years ago, but I'm hopeful that
the @asu email address is still good.
This will be a completely
unexpected message, a real "bolt from the blue."
Indeed, I decided not to send it yesterday so you
would not dismiss it as an April Fool's Day prank.
In brief, I am in possession of about 25 letters
your father wrote to my father, 1939-1942.
Some quick background: My
father, Gordon A. Barrows, was a 1939 graduate of
Middlebury College. Starting in the Fall of '39 he
spent about two years at Muskingum College in Ohio
(one semester as a student, approx. 18 months as a
field representative). Then he returned to
Middlebury as assistant director of admissions until
he was drafted in May 1942. Following military
service, he returned briefly to his old position at
Middlebury, and then worked as a counselor at the VA
regional office in Rutland, VT (where I was born in
November 1946). He then began graduate study in
clinical psychology at Western Reserve University in
Cleveland, completing a doctorate in 1952. He worked
at a VA hospital near Cleveland for a few years,
then took a position with the Canadian Bank of
Commerce in Toronto where he implemented a
nationwide testing program. In 1958 he accepted a
position with the Indiana Department of Mental
Health and the family moved to Indianapolis.
He died, quite unexpectedly, in 1962 after suffering
a heart attack at his desk.
My mother remained in
Indianapolis. Except for military service (1969-71)
and graduate school, so have I. Over the years, as
Mom moved from a two-story house, to a small condo,
to assisted living, to a nursing home, more and more
boxes of "stuff" came to reside with me. Mostly they
went into basement or closet storage without being
thoroughly examined. Following Mom's death in early
2020 I have been (slowly) working my way through
these boxes, several of which I would describe as
"family memorabilia."
Recently, I began going through a box
that I had very cursorily examined 20+ years
ago when I was moving from one house to another.
Among other things, it contained a large stack of
neatly folded letters. I pulled one off the top of
the stack that appeared to be WWII-era
correspondence. I made a mental note to return to
them sometime. That "sometime" has been the past
month or so. It turns out that most of the letters
in that stack were written by my father to a man who
had been a mentor to him. The mentor saved the
letters and at some point his widow apparently
returned them to Dad. But also in that stack were
about 25 letters written to my father by someone who
was obviously a college classmate (and perhaps a
fraternity brother?) and signed himself "Jerry."
I had no idea at first who
"Jerry" might be. But in one of the letters he
mentioned that his parents were building a new house
and joked that it might be dubbed "Cole Mansion."
So, Jerry Cole. And then I found a letter on
college stationery that listed the members of the
"1939 Junior Week Committee," including one Gerald
Cole. Bingo! A little on-line sleuthing (which
eventually brought up your fascinating website) led
me to Gerald Ainsworth Cole, Middlebury College A.B.
'39, St. Lawrence University M.S., 1941, University
of Minnesota Ph.D., 1949, zoology educator.
The letters begin in June 1939
and run through early 1942 when Dad was drafted. No
doubt their constant moves during the war years
ended the correspondence. Your father talks about
his work as a summer camp counselor, his
going--briefly, I gather--to what was then
Massachusetts State University ("Appleknocker
U.), and his transfer to St. Lawrence U.
There's lots about his social life, which seems to
have been robust and included frequent trips back to
Middlebury or visits with Middlebury friends who
were still in the general vicinity. Many of
the letters were written when Dad was in Ohio, so
there lots of sports score updates and gossip about
who's getting married, who's broken up, etc.
There's the occasional comment that would be
considered racially insensitive or misogynistic
today (keeping in mind he was 22-23 years old and
this was 80+ years ago).
I've read the letters and found them
interesting but have no further use for them. But
the historian in me (Ph.D. and 28 years teaching
history at the Indianapolis campus of Indiana
University) makes me reluctant to consign them to
the trash or the recycling bin. So, if you would
like to have them, I'd be happy to send them along.
Just send me your snail mail address and I'll make
it happen.
Regards,
Robert Barrows
rbarrows@iupui.edu
Dear Robert,
Thanks so much for contacting me and yes I would
very much like to have the letters. Usually people
contact me saying how much they liked the letters
and photos they find on my 30,000-file website. A
kid from Botswana found his dad’s pictures and many
letters on my site, the grandson of a forest ranger
at Montezuma Well found all my writings about his
grandad, and the cousin of Buddy Rovit, Hemingway
scholar and novelist contacted me about the letters
he and I wrote a few years back as I knew him in
Kentucky but only when I was about five years old.
I feel that one must never throw anything out as
whenever I have I have sorely regretted it.
With regard to racially insensitive language, my
parents were quite progressive with regard to race.
I remember my mom was on a bus in Louisville when I
was a child and a woman leaned over and said, "There
are some negroes on the bus." To which my mom said,
"What of it? Some of my best friends are negroes!"
To which she later added to me: "Which really wasn't
true." I remember my dad saying in WWII he had a
black friend who had to leave for the front on a
different bus from the white soldiers. But the
language back then was careless and insensitive.
People didn't know any better I think.
Anyhow, thanks so much. My address is...
Tom Cole
8922 East Sun Lakes Boulevard North
Sun Lakes, Arizona 85248
Tom Cole
