NASHVILLE, TN– Excerpts from a collection of over 200 Love letters which tells the story of a couple’s courtship and marriage during World War II, is now on view digitally through the Nashville Public Library, offering an intimate portrait of love during war.
Letters from William Raymond Whitaker and Jane Dean were found in a house in Nashville that had belonged to Jane and her siblings. It was donated in 2016 to the Metro Nashville Archives.
Whitaker, who went to Ray, was from New Rochelle, New York. He moved to Tennessee’s capital to attend the historic Black Meharry Medical College, according to Urban Library archivist Kelly Sirko. There he met and dated Jane, another student at the college.
The pair lost contact when Ray left Nashville. In the summer of 1942 he was drafted into the army. Stationed at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, he decided to reconnect with Jane, who was then working as a medical laboratory technician at Vanderbilt University.
The library does not contain Ray’s first letter to Jane, but it does contain her response. She greeted him somewhat formally as “Dear Wm R.”
“It was certainly a pleasant and sad surprise to hear from you,” she wrote on July 30, 1942. “It is nice because you will always hold a place in my heart, and it is good to know that you are thinking of me from time to time. Sad that you are in the armed forces – perhaps I should not say it but war is so uncertain, but I am proud to know that you are doing your duty for your country.”
Jane then moves on to the list – perhaps as a hint? – A series of mutual acquaintances who have recently married, noting those who have had children or are rumored to have children. She signed the letter saying: “Write, message or call me soon – Lovely Jane.”
“You can’t help but smile when you read these letters,” Sirko said. “You really can’t. And this was just an intimate look at two ordinary people during a really complicated time in our history.”
Nashville archivists have been unable to locate any living relatives of Ray and Jane, so most of what they know about them is from letters, Sirko said. The couple had no children, according to an obituary for Ray, who died in Nashville in 1989.
The donation also included some photographs and a ray patch from the historic black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha.
Besides the love story, the collection offers “this moment-to-moment perspective… of what it’s like to deal with certain racial issues, certain gender issues, their work, a soldier’s life, all of those things,” Sirko said. That’s why the archivists wanted to make it accessible to the public.
Just two months after the first letters, the romance was heating up. Ray was assigned to Fort McClellan in Alabama, where he would help organize the revitalized—and segregated—92nd Infantry Division, which continued to see combat in Europe.
In an undated letter dated September 1942, he told Jane: “I have something very important to tell you when I see you and you will be surprised to know what it is.
“I might ask you to marry me. No one ever knows.”
He teases her by saying that if he went to officer training school, he would be able to “draw a pretty big paycheck” — about $280 a month if he was married and $175 if he was single.
“In fact,” he writes, “I cannot leave the excess amount to the government and must have someone to help me spend it.”
At first Jane was skeptical. “What makes you think you still love me?” “Are you alone and away from home,” she asked on September 23. “I’m sure I want you to love me but not under these circumstances.”
The September 24 letter from Ray is more serious. “Events are changing so rapidly these days that one cannot plan ahead. But I will make a decisive decision on the most important matters,” he writes.
Ray says he thought he and Jane couldn’t be together because they lived so far away from each other. He says he dated other women but “I couldn’t find the companionship and love I so desperately wanted to find. All I got into was trouble and more trouble.”
Ray quickly won her over, and they were married on 7 November in Birmingham.
In a letter dated November 9, Jane addresses Ray as “my dear husband.” She is happy about the marriage but is sad that the couple must remain separated for the time being. She has already returned to her job and family in Nashville while he returns to the Army base.
“It is so wonderful that you have such a sweet and beautiful husband. My dear, you will never know how much I love you. The only regret is that we have not been married for years… As it is now, things are uncertain and we are not together but we have a happy few hours. But perhaps this old war will end soon and we can be together forever.”
She concludes, “My dear, be kind and write to me soon. I want a letter from my husband. Remember that I will always love you. Always – from your wife.”