Can you help solve the mystery of the war-time letters?
When a Stroud contractor found a box of 80-year-old letters in the basement of a home he was renovating, he didn’t know he was unearthing a mystery.
Now, a local MP has joined in the investigation to help reunite the nostalgic letters with the family of the writers.
The story starts a little over 10 years ago, when Stroud contractor Dave Smart scored a job in Toronto through a friend to renovate an old house.
While doing work in the basement, Smart made a discovery behind the furnace.
“In behind the furnace was a box. The box contained about 200 letters,” Smart told BarrieToday. “I brought them home.
"I didn’t think too much of it," he added.
Most of the neatly written letters are correspondence between Arthur Robert Whitley and his wife, Amy Florence (Midge) Gorman, written between 1939 and November 1941.
July 29, 1940
“Hello Midge,
I’d sure like to see you right now. Writing makes me think too hard and I get the blues.
...There’s so many things I’d like to say but I don’t want to say them on paper. I’ll save them up until I get home. Then we will start all over it will be better than ever.
We’ll buy a good car and go see some of the places I’ve been to, and I’ll tell you the whole story then...”
Smart says his girlfriend at the time smoked, so whenever she would go out to the garage for a cigarette, she would pull a letter out of the box to read it. A few years later, Smart’s granddaughter was learning about the First World War in school and students were bringing in artifacts from that time.
Smart asked his granddaughter if she’d be interested in bringing in the letters.
“My daughter (her mother) then started reading them, too, and she was fascinated by the whole story,” said Smart.
Jan. 3, 1941
“Hello Midgie,
Thanks a lot for the New Year’s greetings, it was sure a surprise.
“... A double scotch would sure come in handy as it’s cold enough to freeze the nuts off a brass monkey. There’s no heat in our room. I can’t see to write for my breath.
... I haven’t heard from you for sometime and it may be a helluva while yet. They told us yesterday that a lot of our mail burned in London the other day...”
Over the years, Smart has done a title search on the home to try to find Whitley or Gorman, but to no avail.
“I always have wanted to give them to the family. I did a little bit of research, as did my friend Pat, but we didn’t find anything,” said Smart.
Smart lent the letters to his friend Pat Hofland, who lives in Innisfil, and had been on a medical leave from work, looking for something to pass the time.
She read most of the letters, while also putting them in protective plastic to preserve them.
“I was on a sick leave and I didn’t have much to do, so Dave suggested putting them in chronological order. But the history in them is amazing,” Hofland said. “It’s a neat story. It was like a young love story. Two young people. He was shipped over to England. They’re young, they have no money, they’re cold and afraid. They didn’t know what was going to happen. That comes through in the letters.”
Hofland suggested contacting Barrie-Innisfil MP John Brassard for his help in trying to track down Whitley’s family, after receiving one of Brassard’s mailers pointing to his role as the Conservative Party's shadow minister for Veterans Affairs.
“If we couldn’t find them, I thought he could,” said Hofland.
April 17, 1941
“Hello Midge,
... We had a big night last night. It was terrible. I can’t tell you how bad it was. Words can’t express it. I haven’t heard from you since March 2, but I am blaming the mail, not you. So don’t go feeling bad about it.
After all, we are at war...”
Brassard’s office got to work searching for information about Whitley and Gorman, to whom most of the letters are addressed.
Through their search, they found Whitley was born in 1906.
Whitley and Gorman married in October 1933 in what is now North York.
Gorman died Aug. 19, 2000, at the age of 94. She is buried in a cemetery in North York, indicating her family may still be living in that area.
“These letters are just unbelievable,” Brassard said. “They were writing on an almost daily basis. You can tell he’s very much in love with his wife, Amy. It tells a story.”
Some of the letters are addressed to Amy, and others are addressed to Midge. Hofland thinks they are different people, as she says there are some days when Whitley wrote to both Amy and Midge. However, Brassard suspects Midge might just be a nickname for Amy.
Whitley started writing from Vimy Barracks in Kingston, Ont., before being shipped overseas.
“Some of the letters in here lead up to just two days before Pearl Harbor was attacked (in) late November 1941,” said Brassard. “The letters tell this story of the journey of where he’s been throughout these three years.”
July 27, 1941
“I received your letter today and 1,000 smokes. Will they ever come in handy.
... Keep on hoping and praying for me, because next month the blitz will be on again and I may need a bit of luck and help.
So long, honey.
xxxxxxx Bob.”
Brassard says his office is working with Veterans Affairs to try to find as much information as they can on Whitley.
“Whether he died in the line of duty, or naturally... we’re trying to go through that with the ultimate goal of finding the family so we can return the letters to them,” he said.
While Brassard says his office gets a lot of requests from veterans seeking assistance, this one was very unique.
“This is the first time where we’ve had this kind of historical (request) brought to us, and we’re actively trying to find out who this Mr. Whitley was and get these letters to his family. We’re confident we can find out the history, but the question will be if there’s any family we can get these letters to.
“We’re trying to find some great-great-grandchild somewhere who might be interested in seeing what their great grandfather wrote to their great grandmother,” he added.
