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Stories from sea
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| Submitted photo John Quinn, signalman third class, performing one of his daily duties for the Navy. |
Letters provide
a history lesson
By RYAN PFEIL
H&N Staff Writer
It was heavily censored by the War Department, and their mail came and went skittishly — sometimes it was a month old.
It made mail call all the more special.
World War II servicemen like Klamath Falls residents Ray Daffer, Isom Patterson and John Wesley Quinn were constantly moving, and it could take a long time for mail to catch up or for their letters to make it home. They’d get mail in packs of three, four or five letters, numbered in order so they’d know where to begin.
Isom Patterson’s wife, Edith Faye, says she’s unsure why she keeps her husband’s letters.
“It’s kind of unusual to do that, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s a wonder I didn’t pitch them, but I didn’t.”
Maybe it was because of the times and trials, maybe because the circuitous route and the waiting endured made them more precious.
“You didn’t have all the technology you’ve got today,” said Robert Quinn, son of sailor John Wesley Quinn. “That’s the only way they had to communicate.”
For Ruby Daffer, wife of sailor Ray Daffer, the letters mean as much as they did when she first received them. She and Ray recently celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary and wanted to make a scrapbook. Ray’s stacks of letters, neatly stacked in a shoebox, are more than just nostalgia — they’re a history lesson.
“You’d be amazed at the amount of people that were around then that are gone now,” Ray said. “We’re down to a precious few.”
Ray and Ruby Daffer
Ruby Daffer immediately wrote to her husband: The president was dead.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt complained of a headache early in the afternoon of April 12, 1945. He had been posing for a portrait, and was put to bed. A doctor concluded FDR had a severe stroke.
The president died that day, at the age of 63, less than a month before the United States of America declared victory in Europe. Ruby wrote that the death was a total surprise.
Ray Daffer wrote back just a few days later from the U.S.S. Whitley, an Andromeda class attack cargo and ammunition ship a few days later.
“Yes, I knew about the president,” he wrote on April 12, 1945. “It was a shock to us also. I believe the war will go on as it did before, though.”
Before entering the service, Ray Daffer worked as a steam fitter and plumber in a cement plant in the small town of Cowell, Calif. When he joined the Navy in 1944, he and Ruby had been married five years. They moved to Klamath Falls in 1947 after Ray returned home.
He probably wrote that letter about the president where the light was best — in the restroom. He may also have written it in the mess hall — the same spot where sailors played cards or watched movies: black and white stories on reels like “Frenchman’s Creek” and “The Very Thought of You.” Ray did not care for the latter. “Not so hot. Something about a sailor’s tangled love affair. Dear John letters and things like that. Not very interesting.”
Just before receiving Ruby’s letter about FDR’s death, he had been looking through other letters from her and had found their anniversary card.
“It is nice and sounds so like you,” he wrote. “I sure will be happy when we don’t have to send our cards anymore. Best not to dwell on the subject, though. It is long enough as it is.”
Ray Daffer had been gone for almost two years, and though Roosevelt’s death was tragic, he could really only think of home.
“I will close for tonight saying as I usually do that I love you and miss you an awful lot. That seems to be about the only way I can say it.”
A letter to
John Quinn
Near the Pacific island of Tinian, another sailor opened a different sort of letter: A page and a half of neat cursive written in black ink. It was his biography.
“He used to go to Sunday School, and one Easter, he had black and white shoes and white pants and a blue coat,” the letter said. “He was so proud and so cute.”
The letter went on to describe how he had earned his Bible by going to church 28 straight Sundays, and how his class of youngsters usually sang “The Old Time Religion” and “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder” as their hymns.
“I guess it was because those songs rang out the loudest,” the author wrote.
The letter described his whole life in brief, the one he’d lived before the war. He pitched for his baseball team and built model airplanes, but not before wrecking them outside. “But I guess that was part of the fun,” the letter said.
It also talked of his high school years; of prom and his new suit and his desire for curly hair which led him to get a “permanent.”
“Had to take a lot of ragging about that, but it soon grew out,” the letter said.
“Then one day he grew up suddenly and went away to win the war,” the author wrote. “He’s in the Navy now and has a birthday soon — (his) 18th, and wherever he is, (I) will be thinking of him and wishing he was here.
“So happy birthday, son and lots of good wishes. All the best, from Mom.”
After his service, John Quinn returned to Klamath Falls, his hometown, on May 8, 1946. He worked in a bakery and then at the Meadowland Creamery. He started his own beverage distribution service, Franklin Quinn Distributing, soon after, and retired in 1970. He died in July, 2007, and is buried at Klamath Memorial Cemetery.
Patterson letters
In Missouri, Edith Faye Patterson sat on the porch with her little girl, Shirley, and her mother while child and grandmother made “all the mess that they can,” Edith wrote to her husband, Isom, a soldier stationed at Misawa, Japan.
Edith’s father was resting well, but she feared he would “raise the roof all night.” He was sick, and the doctor had just changed his medicine, though it did not seem to help.
“He is getting where he don’t eat anything and is sick a lot and vomiting up what he does eat,” she wrote.
In the 7th Company of the 321st Infantry Wild Cat Division, Patterson trained with the army in amphibious landing craft on the shores of the Philippines, and later, Japan. He would return to the Basin after the service, and would farm in Merrill and Klamath Falls until his retirement in 1982.
It was cold where he was stationed when his wife wrote that letter. So cold, the newspapers said, the mail transport planes that usually came in from their stop off point in the Philippines had been grounded. Food was another issue. They’d had one serving of fresh butter and meat since they had arrived months ago he wrote in a letter.
The night before, one of the cooks had informed him that night’s chow would be pork roast, with chicken the next day. A letter from his mother the a few days ago had informed him of a turkey and strawberries in a freezer waiting for him at home.
“Sure hope I get there before it’s too late,” he wrote.
But above fresh food, warmer weather, hunting, and going to the movies, the things he missed most were his baby girl and wife. He thought of them most days, confident he would hold them again soon.
“I get so homesick for you and her I can’t hardly see,” he wrote. “But our day is coming before long, never to part again.”
See Wednesday's paper for more stories and letters.
It made mail call all the more special.
World War II servicemen like Klamath Falls residents Ray Daffer, Isom Patterson and John Wesley Quinn were constantly moving, and it could take a long time for mail to catch up or for their letters to make it home. They’d get mail in packs of three, four or five letters, numbered in order so they’d know where to begin.
Isom Patterson’s wife, Edith Faye, says she’s unsure why she keeps her husband’s letters.
“It’s kind of unusual to do that, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s a wonder I didn’t pitch them, but I didn’t.”
Maybe it was because of the times and trials, maybe because the circuitous route and the waiting endured made them more precious.
“You didn’t have all the technology you’ve got today,” said Robert Quinn, son of sailor John Wesley Quinn. “That’s the only way they had to communicate.”
For Ruby Daffer, wife of sailor Ray Daffer, the letters mean as much as they did when she first received them. She and Ray recently celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary and wanted to make a scrapbook. Ray’s stacks of letters, neatly stacked in a shoebox, are more than just nostalgia — they’re a history lesson.
“You’d be amazed at the amount of people that were around then that are gone now,” Ray said. “We’re down to a precious few.”
Ray and Ruby Daffer
Ruby Daffer immediately wrote to her husband: The president was dead.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt complained of a headache early in the afternoon of April 12, 1945. He had been posing for a portrait, and was put to bed. A doctor concluded FDR had a severe stroke.
The president died that day, at the age of 63, less than a month before the United States of America declared victory in Europe. Ruby wrote that the death was a total surprise.
Ray Daffer wrote back just a few days later from the U.S.S. Whitley, an Andromeda class attack cargo and ammunition ship a few days later.
“Yes, I knew about the president,” he wrote on April 12, 1945. “It was a shock to us also. I believe the war will go on as it did before, though.”
Before entering the service, Ray Daffer worked as a steam fitter and plumber in a cement plant in the small town of Cowell, Calif. When he joined the Navy in 1944, he and Ruby had been married five years. They moved to Klamath Falls in 1947 after Ray returned home.
He probably wrote that letter about the president where the light was best — in the restroom. He may also have written it in the mess hall — the same spot where sailors played cards or watched movies: black and white stories on reels like “Frenchman’s Creek” and “The Very Thought of You.” Ray did not care for the latter. “Not so hot. Something about a sailor’s tangled love affair. Dear John letters and things like that. Not very interesting.”
Just before receiving Ruby’s letter about FDR’s death, he had been looking through other letters from her and had found their anniversary card.
“It is nice and sounds so like you,” he wrote. “I sure will be happy when we don’t have to send our cards anymore. Best not to dwell on the subject, though. It is long enough as it is.”
Ray Daffer had been gone for almost two years, and though Roosevelt’s death was tragic, he could really only think of home.
“I will close for tonight saying as I usually do that I love you and miss you an awful lot. That seems to be about the only way I can say it.”
A letter to
John Quinn
Near the Pacific island of Tinian, another sailor opened a different sort of letter: A page and a half of neat cursive written in black ink. It was his biography.
“He used to go to Sunday School, and one Easter, he had black and white shoes and white pants and a blue coat,” the letter said. “He was so proud and so cute.”
The letter went on to describe how he had earned his Bible by going to church 28 straight Sundays, and how his class of youngsters usually sang “The Old Time Religion” and “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder” as their hymns.
“I guess it was because those songs rang out the loudest,” the author wrote.
The letter described his whole life in brief, the one he’d lived before the war. He pitched for his baseball team and built model airplanes, but not before wrecking them outside. “But I guess that was part of the fun,” the letter said.
It also talked of his high school years; of prom and his new suit and his desire for curly hair which led him to get a “permanent.”
“Had to take a lot of ragging about that, but it soon grew out,” the letter said.
“Then one day he grew up suddenly and went away to win the war,” the author wrote. “He’s in the Navy now and has a birthday soon — (his) 18th, and wherever he is, (I) will be thinking of him and wishing he was here.
“So happy birthday, son and lots of good wishes. All the best, from Mom.”
After his service, John Quinn returned to Klamath Falls, his hometown, on May 8, 1946. He worked in a bakery and then at the Meadowland Creamery. He started his own beverage distribution service, Franklin Quinn Distributing, soon after, and retired in 1970. He died in July, 2007, and is buried at Klamath Memorial Cemetery.
Patterson letters
In Missouri, Edith Faye Patterson sat on the porch with her little girl, Shirley, and her mother while child and grandmother made “all the mess that they can,” Edith wrote to her husband, Isom, a soldier stationed at Misawa, Japan.
Edith’s father was resting well, but she feared he would “raise the roof all night.” He was sick, and the doctor had just changed his medicine, though it did not seem to help.
“He is getting where he don’t eat anything and is sick a lot and vomiting up what he does eat,” she wrote.
In the 7th Company of the 321st Infantry Wild Cat Division, Patterson trained with the army in amphibious landing craft on the shores of the Philippines, and later, Japan. He would return to the Basin after the service, and would farm in Merrill and Klamath Falls until his retirement in 1982.
It was cold where he was stationed when his wife wrote that letter. So cold, the newspapers said, the mail transport planes that usually came in from their stop off point in the Philippines had been grounded. Food was another issue. They’d had one serving of fresh butter and meat since they had arrived months ago he wrote in a letter.
The night before, one of the cooks had informed him that night’s chow would be pork roast, with chicken the next day. A letter from his mother the a few days ago had informed him of a turkey and strawberries in a freezer waiting for him at home.
“Sure hope I get there before it’s too late,” he wrote.
But above fresh food, warmer weather, hunting, and going to the movies, the things he missed most were his baby girl and wife. He thought of them most days, confident he would hold them again soon.
“I get so homesick for you and her I can’t hardly see,” he wrote. “But our day is coming before long, never to part again.”
See Wednesday's paper for more stories and letters.
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