Letters From Miss Edna

Preface

The l15 letters found in this book were written by a woman whose life spanned most of the twentieth century.  Born in l908, Miss Edna’s letters begin in l925 when she went away to college.  They end at her death in l975.    Hers is a story of ordinary people – how they lived and loved and worked and died – during a period of extraordinary change in the world.  Like the majority of Americans who were born before World War II, Miss Edna was reared in a rural community.  Her family lived in the sandy land of North East Texas - in the area where the sands are so deep, that, in her early days, before hard-surfaced roads, wagons and cars often stuck in the powdery stuff as they moved down the narrow country roads.    Her ancestors, like the majority of people in the United States, at the time, were English and Irish, with one great-grandmother from an American Indian Family.  She was one of the first women in her family to have the opportunity for high education.  And, like so many of her time, she died an untimely death from a radical cancer.

As Miss Edna’s life unfolds, she is caught up in the abnormal changes that moved the world through the twentieth century.  The reader sees the drama of the century by reading these simple and private letters of a young woman who wrote first to her parents, then to her lover, to the parents of her students, to friends, and finally to her own grown children.  The letters often describe processes that are a part of by-gone days – travel by buggy, picking cotton, making hominy – even making mattresses as a part of one of President Roosevelt’s WPA programs.  They show a progression of life from travel in buggies and farm wagons to travel in early cars, then by airplane.   In schools she moves from slates to computers and in her home she moves from wood cook stoves to electric kitchens!  Her life spans World War I, World War II, Korea and Viet Nam.

She was known for 50 years as “Miss Edna” because a generation of school children called her by that title.  When all those children became adults they continued to use that title of respect for her.  After she married, she and her husband were referred to by everyone in the community as “Don and Miss Edna.”

Miss Edna’s practice was to write letters every Sunday afternoon.  Over the years she wrote hundreds of letters, although, with the exception of the love letters, only samples of them are shown here.  The letters are edited where words and sentences are no longer clear on the fading stationery.  In cases where no letter remains the reconstructed letter is based on interviews with family and community members.  In some cases, stories that Miss Edna shared with Patsy have been formatted into letters.  Facsimiles are shown for interest and authenticity.  Don Johnson’s love letters to Miss Edna are included for clarity and to more clearly tell Miss Edna’s story.