Back in 1935 when Fats Waller recorded “I’m Going to Sit Right Down and Right Myself a Letter” he had no idea that the written letter, a common means of communication for centuries, would be an endangered art form 90 years later.

You don’t think so? How many handwritten personal letters have you received in the past week compared to, say, 40 years ago? Do you have an up-to-date postal mailing address book? I don’t.

E-mail, text messaging and cheap long-distance calls have nearly eliminated handwritten letters. In my case, the exception to e-mail was an occasional letter to a distant cousin in Germany who did not have an e-mail account. Because of my lousy penmanship, I used a computer to “hand” write my letters and since she wasn’t familiar with English I depended on “Google translate” to be sure I didn’t confuse her. Unfortunately, my cousin passed away a few years ago and I miss corresponding with her.

Few of today’s youngsters will be able to recall the joy of finding in the mail a handwritten letter from someone special.

When I was a youngster and long-distance calls were still expensive my mother regularly corresponded by mail with family and friends. While the rest of us ate our noon meal, Mom read aloud to our father the letters received in that day’s mail. Usually the letters brought good news, or at least mundane news, but some conveyed news of family problems, marriage woes, health concerns, pregnancies or death.

When there was something my brothers and I weren’t supposed to know my mother read more quietly or explained it to my father in German. I still had good hearing back then and understood enough of the family’s language to keep up with who was having problems with whom.

After learning to read and write, I enjoyed writing letters to my grandparents and cousins and loved to receive letters in return.

My mother gave birth to her first daughter when I was 11-years old. She already had four sons and when my father told us we had a new sister I was not pleased. Fearing how life might change with a girl in the house, I wrote a letter to my mother in the hospital stating my disapproval.

Even though I quickly grew fond of my new sister, Mom never let me forget that correspondence.

As a junior in high school I became friends with a German exchange student who lived with my aunt and uncle for a year. When Bert went back to Germany at the end of the school year we continued our acquaintance with letters.

Over the years the frequency of our letters diminished but our communication rebounded when we both got e-mail. Bert was in ill health at that time and sometime after receiving his last e-mail my aunt called to tell me that he had passed away. A short time later the mailman delivered an envelope edged in black, a traditional German mourning cover notice of Bert’s death from his widow and daughters.

Letters also bring sad news.

After my wife and I moved away from our hometowns we kept in touch with family by exchanging letters. It was always a treat to come home from work and find in the mail a letter from friends and family back home.

The time required to hand write a letter often resulted in fuller expressions of the heart than today’s hastily written e-mails and shorthand text messages.

This fuller expression of the heart is readily apparent in the countless love letters written over the centuries. Victor Young and Edward Heyman’s popular song, “Love Letters” says it well: “Love letters straight from your heart/keep us so near while apart. I’m not alone in the night/when I can have all the love you write.”

Shana Alexander, a 20th century American journalist, once wrote, “Letters are expectation packaged in an envelope.”

So they are. With expectation we read news from distant family, friends and sweethearts; good news, just plain news and, too often, bad news.

Handwritten personal letters are becoming a lost art and in their demise we are losing something very special.

(Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. ©2026 by Huisman Communications.)