They're great, aren't they? There's a sweetness in so many of those letters that
you don't see anymore and some of them are also SO funny & dear.
For me, they give special insight into how my Dad became the man that I knew.
My parents bought our c1890 house in 1953(it's still my beloved home) and it has an
attic that 's really a third story with rooms that were used as living quarters for a cook
& maid. There's a large highboy chest of drawers up there and I asked my mother how they got it up there. She stared at me & said: " Now Mary Ann, who do YOU think got it up there?"
She told me that Dad put it on his back & hauled it up by himself.
I suppose if you walked through N. Africa, Italy, and France with those heavy packs,
you could get a highboy up a flight of stairs.
Intrepid by nature, the Army & the war made Dad virtually fearless.
He used to get an old wooden ladder & climb up to the third floor roof and walk
around up there like a mountain goat. He'd haul paint cans up and balance himself on the second floor gutter and paint. I'd "tattle" on him to my mother, but she'd say: "There's
nothing we can do about it, just don't look at him, dear." I suppose if you'd been
up & down rope netting on ships, landed on beaches in LSTs, and climbed mountains -
what would the big deal be about a roof?
I have a vivid memory of a hurricane when I was very young. My mother was
admonishing us to stay away from the windows, when my brother & I spy
Dad's long legs through the kitchen window. At the height of the hurricane, he'd
decided to go out on the garage roof and tinker with the shutters. Fran hollared &
pointed at the window: "Hey Ma, how come Daddy's outside?". I can still see Dad's
pant legs flapping back & forth in the wind & hear Ma yelling: "Frank Howard!
You get in the house this INSTANT!" 
M - where can I get a copy of your book?
"M2" to "M1"Over. (as a child of the 50s, you must remember walkie-talkies. Email
is better, but it sure was fun clamboring around the backyards with 'em)