← Part of Wildermuth Family of Marietta, Ohio (Wildermuth & Bain, 2005–2009)
letter
Letter from Chuck Eesley to his mother Terrie, 28 December 2007
Letter of 28 December 2007 from Charles Eric 'Chuck' Eesley — then living at 70 Pacific Street #84, Cambridge, Massachusetts (his MIT doctoral years) — to his mother Terrie Bain at 323 Gilman Avenue, Marietta, Ohio, as transcribed in the Wildermuth family book. A warm after-Christmas thank-you note: he's enjoying the CDs and looking forward to taking the camcorder to San Francisco, encloses an article on the Howtoons book and $700 toward painting the house, wishes he could be around more to do the painting himself, and recalls the 'under-sea creatures' from the visit. One of the very few of Chuck's own letters preserved in the archive, and the mirror image of the Vietnam-era letters his father wrote a generation earlier to the same recipient.
What the letter is
A letter of 28 December 2007 from Charles Eric “Chuck” Eesley — then at 70 Pacific Street #84, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in his MIT doctoral years — to his mother Terrie Bain at 323 Gilman Avenue, Marietta, Ohio. It survives as a transcription in the Wildermuth family book. The book’s entry also records the family facts: Chuck, son of Terrie Lee Wildermuth and Charles McMaster Eesley, born 3 December 1979, graduated Duke University 12 May 2002.
Transcription
12/28/07
[Dear] Mom,
Happy New Year! Thank you for a nice Christmas. I’ve been enjoying the CD’s and look[ing] forward to taking the camcorder to San Francisco with me.
I’m including an article on the Howtoons book. Thank you also for the cookies. I’ve bee[n en]joying them! I agree I should aim for the 25th and the days after next year to have more tim[e to] relax w/you. I just like the days leading up to X-mas.
I’m including a little money [$700.00] to go towards painting the house. If I were aroun[d] [mo]re I could pitch in and do the painting myself.
Well it seems the time at home flew by! Those under-sea creatures were pretty incredibl[e] [weren’]t they! It was good to see you. Hopefully you can visit again soon. [Tell Ben thanks…]
Notes
The letter is a quiet counterpart to the Vietnam letters his father Charlie wrote to this same Terrie forty years earlier — the son now writing home to his mother from graduate school, sending money toward the family house and wishing he could be there to help paint it himself. The photographed page trails off at the foot; bracketed text marks words cut off or reconstructed from context.
Source: Wildermuth Family of Marietta, Ohio (Wildermuth & Bain, 2005–2009).