Penpals finally meet after five decades
It was the best 25 cents Joan Tradup ever spent.
She was 9 years old and living in rural Minnesota, USA, when she spotted an advertisement in a local farming magazine. ’’For 25c I could send my name in and get a penpal, so that’s how it started.’’
It was the beginning of a correspondence, and a friendship, that would last more than 53 years.
A fortnight ago – and half a century after the first letter – Tradup arrived in New Zealand to meet her penpal for the first time.
‘‘We were both nervous about meeting at the airport but it was fine, there was no awkwardness, not one second.’’
Lynda Stedman, of Porirua, was the girl who answered Tradup’s letter all those years ago, and said it was the best thing she ever did.
She kept all the letters from her American friend, and reading them was like watching themselves grow up again, she said.
Photographs, invitations and drawings are all stored within the pages of the letters Stedman kept. Children were born, marriages ended, parents died, and the letters covered it all.
Despite the changes in technology the women only spoke on the phone a couple of times, preferring to share their lives through words. ’’There’s something more personal about writing a letter to someone,’’ Stedman said.
She believed the letters had helped both of them through tough times over the past 50 years.
‘‘If things were troubling us, we put it in our letters and thought: nobody will know me over there.
‘‘All my life I felt I had a sister who just lived overseas. I’ve always had Joan there.’’