Terrie's note to Charlie — "come for Thanksgiving," courtship era

A short handwritten note from Terrie to Charlie from their courtship, kept among his photographs and scanned on the same sheet as their wedding portrait:

Charlie,

Thanks for a really terrific weekend! Be good, and I really want ya’ to come for Thanksgiving. Try harder than your last visit.

Until then, Yours, Terry

It is one of the few surviving pieces in Terrie’s own hand to Charlie — the reverse direction of the Letters from Vietnam, which are almost all Charlie writing home to her. The voice is the courtship at its lightest: a thank-you for a weekend, a nudge to come home for the holiday, the teasing “try harder than your last visit,” and the sign-off “Yours, Terry.” This is the tone underneath the two years of wartime correspondence that followed — the relationship the letters were working to protect.