Letters That Changed Our World
The missives that move us, shake us and, sometimes, alter the course of history.
Oh,the power of letters. They’ve fueled love affairs and severed friendships, ignited wars and settled them. They can convey the most profound thanks, apology or regret. Sometimes, they contain world-altering ideas, such as Albert Einstein’s 1939 letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging him to start a nuclear program. (Einstein’s warning that the Germans might develop atomic bombs led to Roosevelt’s bomb-building Manhattan Project.)
Whatever their content, it’s not just the words that give letters their power—it’s the emotional connections. Whether saved, framed or filed, they’re tangible proof of relationships. Each time they’re read, they transport us back to our feelings about a specific time, place, person or event. This may be the reason hand-written—or hand-typed—communiqués are making a comeback, at least in popular culture. Take Danny Collins , a movie debuting March 20, starring Al Pacino as an aging rocker who receives a posthumous letter from his idol John Lennon. That note reconnects Collins with his character’s younger, more idealistic self. (See “Al Pacino: A Man of Words—and Letters,” page 8. )
“Letters have that kind of power,” says Shaun Usher, editor of Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving a Wider Audience (Chronicle, 2014), who
curated more than 125 such missives, including 14-year-old Fidel Castro’s letter to President Roosevelt requesting $10 and Groucho Marx’s advice to Woody Allen.
But you don’t need to be famous to write or receive something profound. Consider Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda.The two met through a pen pal exchange in 1997 when Alifirenka, then 12 and living in Hatfield, Pa., wrote to a 14-year-old Ganda, who was living in one of Zimbabwe’s worst slums. Despite wildly different upbringings, the two became best friends through letters. Their upcoming book, I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives (Little Brown, 2015), chronicles their six-year correspondence.
“I’d race to the mailbox every day after school in anticipation of receiving a letter,” Alifirenka, now 30, says. “I loved the feel of the paper, the colorful stamps and the way he dotted his i’s with o’s as much as all the stories he shared. His letters felt more like gifts.” Ganda, now 32, says Alifirenka’s letters were his “lifeline.”
“By sharing her life with me, she inspired me to think of a life beyond Zimbabwe,” he says. That included urging Ganda, a stellar student, to apply to American colleges. “Following Caitlin’s very first note, I’d say my full scholarship acceptance letter to Villanova University was the second most important letter of my life,” says Ganda, who went on to finish his MBA at Duke last year.