The Lost Art of Letter Writing

January 23, 2025
Tom Poland

By Tom Poland

 

When you write about earlier times as I often do, you hear from people who lived the very days you describe. Over the course of summer on into September Mr. Russell D. Mellette, 86, has been writing me on a regular basis. A former writer at The State newspaper and a fellow who worked in public relations, he’s well-suited to writing interesting letters. I enjoy his letters which detail his memories, and it’s refreshing as a spring shower to receive old-fashioned letters with a stamp and postmark. No emails from this gent. He practices the time-honored but lost art of letter writing.

With his permission I’m sharing some of Mr. Mellette’s memories, those bits and pieces that together make up a lifetime.

“Too Much Texting. Too Little Talking,” he writes. Indeed he’s right. While it may be convenient to send a group text stating the time for a family dinner, it can degenerate into a conversation among a few about the best place to shop for steaks and the ding, ding, dinging keeps diverting your attention from the road you’re driving, not a good thing. Letters don’t ding.

Penmanship and letter writing: two endangered customs. Photo by Tom Poland.

In one letter he shared the sad story that “Dementia Is Not A Death.” Excerpts from this sad story relate how a son told mourners at his mother’s funeral that she died two times before her actual passing. “Mom first died May 12, 2019, when she couldn’t remember how to prepare her legendary roast. Holding back tears, he said, “She died the second time when she asked me, her son, what my name was.” On a positive note Mr. Mellette shared the uplifting story of a person who has lived with dementia for 20 years and is at the forefront of an advocacy movement for those suffering the syndrome.

Of interest to me were his visits to Senator Strom Thurmond in Washington, D.C. He told me about the time Senator Thurmond put his keys on his desk and told him to drive his car around DC. Mr. Mellette declined, saying, “If I have a fender bender in your car it will be in the Washington Post.” Then Mr. Mellette confessed the truth to the Senator. “It’s my being unfamiliar with the Washington, DC traffic patterns.”

Many times Mr. Mellette flew to DC with the Senator. He recalled when the flight attendant (stewardess in the old parlance) offered a seat in first class to the Senator. “Give it to someone who needs it,” Thurmond replied. His recall of those days opened the curtain a bit. For instance: “Washington waiters always put a glass of carrot juice on the table before Thurmond sat down for a meal.”

Military top brass attended a large birthday party for Thurmond’s 80th birthday at the SC State Fairgrounds. A US Army Captain was assigned to keep Thurmond’s two-year-old son from “marching around.” It was not an easy assignment wrote Mellette.

From life as a senior citizen to days spent among leaders, Mr. Mellette casts a wide net. He recalled the time world leader James F. “Jimmy” Byrnes campaigned for governor in Clarendon County. “He campaigned in Clarendon County, walking the streets of Manning, Summerton, and Turbeville. He popped in and out of stores asking people to vote for him. He campaigned at country stores, on farms, and anywhere his driver and he spotted people.” Mr. Mellette had first met Byrnes as an 11-year-old farm boy and he vividly recalls that Byrnes bought him a Coca-Cola at a grocery store across from the courthouse.

He wrote how the touch of a hand upon another’s helped anxious flyers get through violent turbulence and how he calmed first-time flyers like a little girl flying to California visit her father. “I bet her mother told her to never talk to strangers,” wrote Mr. Mellette. Nonetheless she told him about her best friend, her school, and how her father taught her to ride a bicycle before he moved away. “She thanked me for talking to her and said, ‘I will pray for you.’ ”

In one letter he thanked me “for assisting my therapy of buying cognizant time.” Well it has proved of great benefit to me as well. I enjoy his letters and I keep them in a box neatly stacked in the order I receive them. Like a good journalist he ends his letter -30- (pronounced “dash thirty dash”), the way journalists long signified the end of their reports. Just now I received another letter from him. In a tribute to Mr. Russell D. Mellette I will end this column now to read his letter.

 

Georgia native Tom Poland writes a weekly column about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and culture and speaks frequently to groups in the South. Governor Henry McMaster conferred the Order of the Palmetto upon Tom, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, stating, “His work is exceptional to the state.” Poland’s work appears in books, magazines, journals, and newspapers throughout the South.

Visit Tom’s website at www.tompoland.net

Email him at tompol@earthlink.net