Valentine's Day Round-Up

Couple of things I've been meaning to talk about -- in one case for years -- and since they all relate to loves of a sort, I'll put them together in a Valentine's Day round-up.

First, two media stories.  One, from March 2004, about a World War II era love story, of two Nashville College students, Charles C. Winnia and V.J. Watkins.  After three months of dating, Winnia went off to war and kept up a diary, which was only recently discovered.  And then, through an unlikely chain of coincidences, researchers put the diary together with Ms. V.J. Watkins, who was then living in Nashville.  For, tragically, Lt. Winnia, like so many of our heroes,  was shot down and his diary had rested in a friend's garage for decades.  I can't begin to do justice to this story -- it's so moving, and it's a story of love lasting for decades. 

Here's a sample, though: "You never married," asked the NPR interviewer?  Watkins said something like, "No, but that wasn't entirely because of Charles.  That would sound like an impossible deathless romance ... well, maybe it was because of Charles.  ... Well, I was never 100% sure, but if he'd come back and had been serious about the thing, we might have gotten together...."  So maybe it was because of Charles; in fact, after listening to the story, I suspect it was because of Charles.  Another story of the reach of love -- and the tragic effects of war -- across decades.  Best line -- though not the most moving one, from Ms. Watkins' interview, "I neglected my Vanderbilt studies grievously" (with the grievously pronounced in a most southern fashion.)  It's the perfect Valentine's Day story and extremely moving.  Listen to it at the NPR website.

Now, another story of love letters at war -- this time the "great war" from today's Tuscaloosa News.  Alabama history professor Andrew Huebner and an honors student at UA, Daniel Bush, who're studying letters between Lige Dees and his then-girlfriend (later wife) Mae.

I've been meaning to get back to talking about scholarship I love, but work's been distracting me.  So let me put in a quick plug for a very fine book that I'm reading now, C.S. Manegold's Ten Hills Farm.  I'm going to post on it shortly.  And I'm also going to be talking later in the week over at prawfs about a book I like very much, Anders Walker's The Ghosts of Jim Crow.

Now, one of my favorite quotations regarding love, which came to my attention through an antebellum literary address: La Rochefoucauld's statement (along the lines of), "lovers never tire of talking to each other, because they speak only of themselves."  That explains a lot, about life ... and the internet, too, of course.

And with that, I'll say, happy Valentine's day!

The image is Tyrolean's Saint Valentine (1500-1525), from the National Gallery of Art.

Comments

[Calvin Massey]

Al, Thanks for posting the Winnia-Watkins story. It's a wonderfully bittersweet tale.

[Alfred]

It's a great story, isn't it, Calvin? And a reminder of how much people sacrificed during World War II, both on the front lines and the home front -- and how those sacrifices stretched across decades.