To the Editor:

Thank you Frank L. Palmeri for your opinion piece, “The charm of cursive writing” [The Altamont Enterprise, March 6, 2025].

I, too, think it is a skill worth preserving.

To be able to sign your name is the mark of a literate person. It is also the way much of our history has been written. 

Will our grandchildren be able to read it?

I’m glad people on both sides of my family saved cursive written letters.

Ever since my husband died in 2022, I’ve been reading and organizing family papers and pictures. I’ve been helped through my grief by reading his letters to me and his parents.

We had to be separated by vacation times when we went together for three years in college. Then he spent 13 months in Korea as an Army artillery officer, after we were married, and I stayed behind in graduate school. I saved all those letters and I treasure them.

Our family history is preserved in letters written by great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, siblings, and friends. They give great insight into the personalities and daily lives of relatives.

They bring back memories. They provide understanding of forces that influenced decisions. All bring history alive.

I have so much material it would be good background for memories, poems, or novels.

Well Frank, did you write that love letter to your wife?

Lila Hollister Smith

Westerlo

Editor’s note: Lila Hollister Smith’s letter was penned in lovely cursive and mailed to The Enterprise.