Valentine’s cards have colorful history

NEW YORK — It was Valentine’s Day 1917 in the Minnesota farming village of Lewiston, and Fred Roth — a fourth grader — seems to have come up with just the way to express his love for his sweetheart, Louise Wirt. He gave her a card.

The folding, pop-up Valentine’s Day card, on stock so heavy it remains in good shape 106 years later, reads: “Forget me not!/I ask of thee/ Reserve one spot/In your heart for me.”

And so she did. Years later they married, and Louise displayed the cherished card, tucked into the fretwork of a bedroom dresser, for decades to come.

She pointed it out to her daughter, and later to a granddaughter, me, and it remained near her bedside until her death at 91, a token of lasting love.

Although the message was in English, the card is printed with the word “Germany” and is seemingly imported, as were many cards of that era.

Hallmark, which began offering Valentine’s Day cards in 1913, estimates that today, 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually.

There have long been both earnest, heartfelt Valentines like Grandpa Fred’s, and ones in a more teasing, playful vein.

In the mid-19th century, some people shared “Vinegar Valentines,” a sort of anti-Valentine that featured playfully insulting verses, not unlike a modern-day roast.

Sometimes, cards involved writing in a circle or upside down, like a puzzle. Some had a decorative folded border or verses on the folds; cutwork resembling lace; or watercolor decorations of pierced hearts, lovebirds and flowers.