february-tw-2016

CHARLES &
GARNETTA LEWIS,
WORLD WAR II
In honor of Valentine?s Day, which just
passed, I?d like to tell you about some
pieces on display and in the archives of
the NURFC collection that represent an
epic love story the years could easily have
buried. NURFC was fortunate to receive
a large donation from the Victoria
Retirement Center in 2013, containing
about 800 items belonging to Charles
and Garnetta Lewis of Cincinnati. In
inventorying and cataloging these items,
we realized that the bulk of the materials
were letters written almost daily between
Charles, a member of the Army Air
Force during World War II, and his wife,
while Charles was serving in training in
the United States and with the
India-China T ransport Wing of the AAF
during the last year of the war.
T he thing that thrills me most about this
collection is its ordinariness. Charles
Lewis is not a celebrated war hero or
even a particular trailblazer. He?s a
normal man in a happy marriage,
separated from the one he loves. He
battles that separation anxiety and loss
the only way he knows, by writing to
Garnetta ?- prodigiously. For every
letter in the display cases on the third
floor, there are four more in our archives!
T hese are primarily Charles?letters to
Garnetta, who kept each of the letters
through the many years between the war
and the donation to NURFC. T hough
some of the letters are Garnetta?s to
Charles, I imagine it was much harder
for him to keep the bulk if her letters
19
through the many moves required of him