Families stay in touch with ‘snail mail’

PENPALS Sue Brunner (left) and Vicki Page started writing to each other after Sue’s father Alan McCabe and Vicki’s mother Barbara Gaines started a family tradition.

THESE days writing a letter to a penpal halfway across the world is a thing of the past – but not to Toowoomba teenagers Nicole, Thalia and Jarod Brunner.

They are keeping a family tradition alive.

The three teenagers have found different ways of communicating with their penpals, Californians Julia and Kayla Page, than their grandparents.

However, they still save handwritten letters for special occasions.

The tradition between the two families was started more than 60 years ago when Alan McCabe first wrote to Barbara Gaines.

He said he couldn’t remember exactly how the correspondence started all those years ago, but didn’t imagine how close the two families would become.

His daughter Sue Brunner, who lives in Cotswold Hills, was the next to pick up the letter writing bug.

“I remember dad opening his letter from Barb and saying ‘there’s a letter from Vicki here for you’,” she said.

She was nine-years-old then and would write to Mrs Gaines’ daughter Vicki Page as regularly as she could.

“It was a big event to get a letter those days,” she said.

As the two grew up, Mrs Brunner said they would write to each other about the big milestones in their life.

“We both got married at the same time and when I got pregnant I wrote to Vicki and the letter I got back told me she was pregnant too,” she said.

Mrs Brunner met her penpal for the first time when Mrs Page travelled to Australia with her family in 1988.

“We used to go out to the night clubs, but this time we just took photos of us in our pyjamas,” Mrs Brunner said. “We’re really like sisters, we’re so alike.”

Mrs Page, her husband Barry and her two daughters made the trip to Australia just after Christmas 2013 to visit Mrs Brunner and her family.

“We experienced our first summer Christmas,” Mrs Page said.

The family will return to their home in Yuba City, California, tomorrow.

It was the first time her daughters had travelled to Australia – but Julia and Kayla had met their penpals Nicole, Thalia and Jarod face-to-face twice before when they travelled to America in 2010 and 2012.

PHOTO: BEV LACEY thechronicle.com.au LONG TRADITION: Sue Brunner (left) and Californian Vicki Page started writing letters to each other when they were nine-years-old after Sue’s father Alan McCabe started writing to a pen pal in America. INSET: Alan McCabe kept an old photo of himself and his penpal Barbara Gaines as well as some old letters.