GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - In this age of instant communication and email, having a pen pal seems somewhat quaint.
But writing letters has become something of a habit for Wilma Christian of Grants Pass and Berwyn Arthur of Waimate, New Zealand.
They’ve been writing to each other for more than 40 years.
“We’ve been doing this for such a long time, but you don’t really think about time passing,” says Wilma, 91.
Though the two women have been communicating since 1971, the international correspondence actually dates back long before that.
It was 1941 in Caro, Michigan, when Wilma’s sister Shirley drew a pen pal’s name from a Sunday school bulletin and started writing letters to Berwyn Greenwood in New Zealand.
“The first letter I received from Shirley was dated June 29, 1941. I would have just turned 13,” recalls Berwyn, who turns 88 in May.
The two girls wrote for just two years, exchanging small gifts along with their letters, until Shirley’s tragic death in a boating accident at a Methodist youth camp.
“The hardest thing my mother had to do was to tell (Berwyn) of Shirley’s death,” Wilma says with a catch in her voice. “She had sent Shirley a crystal necklace but (Shirley) never saw it. Instead she was buried with it.”
Not wanting to lose touch, Wilma’s mother, Oril, took up writing to Berwyn in Shirley’s place.
“I loved writing to Wilma’s mother,” Berwyn says. “She wrote such interesting letters.”
Wilma keeps notebooks filled with copies of the handwritten letters her mother and Berwyn exchanged.
After Oril died in 1971, Wilma picked up the correspondence. And she and Berwyn have been writing ever since.
“Seventy-five years is what it adds up to,” says Wilma.
Wilma and Berwyn found they had many common interests, including stamp collecting and gardening - “though we’re in different hemispheres,” says Wilma, who has been coordinator of the Josephine County Master Gardener plant clinic since 2007.
The two women met in person for the first time in 1979, when Wilma and her husband made a month-long trip Down Under.
Waimate, Berwyn’s hometown, is located about 130 miles south of Christchurch.
For two people who have never met to suddenly spend two weeks together could be cause for concern.
“But it was like family,” says Wilma. “Like there hadn’t been any distance or time in between.”
They visited Arrowtown and Queenstown and the Fox Glacier, ate New Zealand oysters and whitebait.
Berwyn and her husband reciprocated, coming to Oregon in 1997.
“We spent the day looking around and at the Crater Lake,” Berwyn says. “And we went to a market and I bought an ornament of a (pistolero) and it sits on my mantlepiece to this day.”
Though the frequency of their correspondence has waned somewhat over the years and they’ve both started keeping in touch via email - “I’m getting lazy,” Wilma admits - the bond they have forged is as strong as ever.
“It has been a very enjoyable friendship,” adds Berwyn. “And I hope some of our families will continue it after we depart.”
“She’s kind of become a sister,” says Wilma.
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Information from: Daily Courier, https://www.thedailycourier.com
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