"I was listening to 'Truth or Consequences' last week, and there was a service man on the program, and he spoke as though the boys were really happy to receive letters ... So I seriously thought of writing you a really long one ... I finally decided to get a roll of paper to write a letter on. I looked downtown and the only roll I could find is this one, and it's a roll of shelf lining paper. How do you like it?"



**

Clarence Higgins read 22 paragraphs

into his wife, Madeline's, correspondence before discovering what prompted her, at about 9:30 p.m. March 9, 1945, to slip one end of that 36-foot roll into a typewriter and begin pecking away at what may be among the lengthiest letters ever scribed to a sailor.

He served in the Pacific with the

, the U.S. Navy's construction battalions, during World War II's waning months.

She was 28, in Winchendon, Mass., caring for their young daughter and son, taking in sewing to make ends meet and missing her man.

Just as home-front spouses do today and have through each modern war, Madeline Higgins wrapped into words everything from family news, neighborhood gossip and home-front hardships to her sharp pangs of loneliness and enduring love for her husband.

Her letter, handed down to their grandson, Devin Higgins of Vancouver, Wash., is a window into an era that sometimes sounds quaint and innocent -- though no era that knows war is either.

**

Mr. Rougier is awfully good to us. He always tells us when he has any product in that is really hard to get, and sometimes he saves us something and brings it to us. Last week, he had some BUTTER, and it's been so long since we tasted real butter that we almost didn't know what it was.



**

Devin's generation hasn't lived

with the sort of wartime want his grandmother knew, when everything from sugar to gasoline was rationed. Yet, austerity isn't unfamiliar.

The 35-year-old stitches together a light-income living from jobs as a reporter for

a small weekly newspaper in Battle Ground, Wash., and as play-by-play announcer for

basketball team.

Still reeling from the end of his 10-year marriage last fall, Devin came home to his attic apartment one night this spring and glanced across the clutter of bachelor life. He needed something to take his mind off his divorce.

He remembered the letter.

Though he'd long intended to, he'd never read the whole thing.

**



This afternoon, I went to the movies ... The show was 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper played the starring roles. It was the most wonderful show I have ever seen ... it had a most beautiful love story. It made me so lonesome for you. It seems everything I do lately, and every movie I see makes me more and more lonely for you. But every day that goes by brings nearer and nearer the day when we will be together again ... It was such a long show, and such torrid love scenes. How wonderful. Wish they were you and me.

**

THE SCROLL PROJECT

Inspired by the long letter his grandmother wrote to his grandfather during World War II,

transcribing, researching and writing about life on the home front.

When he was little,

Devin lived a couple blocks away from his grandparents.

was the sort of safe small town where a kid could run from one house to another without worry, and he did, especially when lemonade or a Fudgsicle waited for him on their porch.

He remembers his grandfather's movie-star good looks, booming voice and inclination to "tell stories 'til you were blue in the face," Devin says.

His grandmother, he recalls, kept a bag of candy on her sewing room's fabric shelf. When she babysat Devin and his brother, Jason, she'd dole it out in that sweet way grandmothers often do.

"She was my Gram," he says, "always somebody I could talk with and laugh with and have fun."

**

We went to donate blood ... right this minute that blood is on its way over to a hospital in Europe, and before tomorrow night it will have been given to one of our boys. I hope mine saves a life. I hope the boy who I have saved will come home to a New America. One where war is a thing of the past, and freedom and security are riding high. I want mine to bring a boy home to a wife or a mother who will still be loving him with all their heart and soul, just as I am loving you this hour. ...



We will tell our grandchildren about what we did to help, and they will hold their heads high ... Oh, darling, it's a wonderful, peaceful feeling to know that one hour out of a day spent in doing what is asked of you will mean so much in years to come. That hour will grow, and all the hours of this war added together will mean the greatest victory in the history of the world, and we will be a part of that history; and we shall be forever proud.

**

Madeline and Clarence helped build

the home where they lived and worked in most of their lives. Her sewing room was up front. The basement held the saw-maintenance shop he started after the war.

Family lore has it -- though Devin has no proof -- that his grandmother was such a superior seamstress she was offered a job as tailor to Sweden's crown prince but she turned it down.

Not that she didn't have dreams.

**

... at least when this is all over, you will be able to say you were there ... Even if you like Winchendon best of all, you have been able to see the rest of the world and find out for yourself that you like it here best of all. I would like to have that same experience. ... right now, there isn't anything else to think about except the fact that every man in the family is out there, and may not even come back. It's Hell to be the one to stay at home.

**

When he was 12,

Devin and his brother moved to Oregon to live with their father. He grew up in Beaverton, graduating from

in 1995.

He and his brother returned east for visits, even after their grandmother died in 1987, 15 days after her 50th wedding anniversary.

On one trip, when Devin was 16, his grandfather reached into a steel file cabinet and pulled out a tattered, yellowed scroll covered with typewritten words -- his grandmother's letter.

"I was immediately awestruck by it," Devin says. "What did my grandmother say to him?"

**

Then at supper time, Clifford Harmon came running in and he told me that President Roosevelt had died. At first, I thought he was pulling a fast one ... he said, cross my heart and hope to die ... I had to wait until Dad came down at seven o'clock to fix the fuse before I could listen to the radio. By that time, there was nothing else on but the news ... The President was such a wonderful man, and it seems that he couldn't die. It seems that somehow he will still be here to guide the footsteps of America, and somehow it seems that everyone will think just before they take a step, Would he have wanted it this way?

**

Clarence died at 88 in 2002.

About five years later, Devin's aunt asked if there was anything he wanted from his grandfather's things.

Only the letter, he told her.

It stayed tucked away until March.

Devin handled the brittle old paper roll carefully, particularly the outer layers with their fragile, fringed edges. He fired up his computer and began transcribing. The job took nine nights.

Madeline wrote daily letters to her husband, too, when he was away at war. But the long letter, the shelf-paper roll, was in the neighborhood of 47,000 to 48,000 words -- "almost as long," Devin says, "as 'The Great Gatsby.'"

His grandmother described family, townspeople, culture and history or, as Devin puts it, "everything that we hold valuable."

**

This afternoon on the radio it said that the Russians were marching into Berlin ... when the war ends, I will stop whatever I am doing, and pray that it will mean that the boys will be coming home very soon.

**

Transcribing his grandmother's letter

inspired Devin to give her words new life. He'd like to write a book about the home front during World War II.

"My goal is not to edit a single word that she says ... but how can I enhance what's there? How can people who are younger than I am learn something?"

In his spare time, he's indexing each historical event Madeline mentions. He hopes to dig through

and mine longtimers' memories to learn more about the townspeople, places and events she mentioned as she spilled her hopes, dreams, joys and difficulties to her husband.

The aspiring author has lots of work ahead, but then, so did his grandmother.

**

Well, I am really getting to the end of this letter. I sort of hate to now, because this letter has become part of my life. All my moods are wrapped up in this sheet of paper. All the wonderful thoughts I have of you, and some of the thoughts that aren't so wonderful. Maybe as you read you will be able to tell when I am angry, when I am gay, when I am blue, when I am lonesome. ... You will know how I feel with you away, and how much I want you back. You will know how terribly I miss you, and how my whole life is centered around you, only you.

**

Few of the letter's entries are dated

, though toward the end Madeline notes it's April 23, about six and a half weeks after she started writing. A week later, German forces surrendered in Italy and less than four months later, the Japanese surrendered, too.

She repeatedly writes that she must close -- must get the letter in the mail.

Devin doesn't know if she ever did. He likes to think, though, that it winged its way to a Navy base or ship out in the Pacific.

He doesn't know, either, what Clarence thought when he finally got it, whether that was at war or when he got home to Winchendon.

He does know, though, that his grandfather kept the scroll tucked safely away for the rest of his life.

**

Well, I just have to close now. If I miss not having this letter to write on, I will just have to write you another one. It has been such a comfort to have something to come home to. It was just like coming home to you.



All my love, all my life. Your loving wife, Maddy.

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