This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

Up next, a listener's story from Loretto M. Thompson. Loretto is the author of an

unexpected Cuddywample, the story of a father's sudden death, a box of World War II letters,

and a daughter's life transformed. Today, she shares that story. Take it away, Loretto.

I never really knew him.

I remember him shaving, being on the sink with him when he was shaving and he'd put a dollop of shaving cream on my nose.

I remember that I had pushed my younger brother off the chair.

And then when my father asked me if I had done that, I said no.

I think the spanking that I received was more about the lie than about pushing my brother off the chair.

And I remember the day that he died.

He was 44 years old.

And I was four.

Yeah. 44 years old, and I was four. And our mother raised us seven of us for 10 years by herself.

And we were dependent on the stories that our mother told us, stories that she would tell over and over again.

And one of those was the story about how our father had written his mother every day

when he was in World War II.

But it never really clicked that the letters still existed. And as she aged, at one point we were at lunch and she said, I have all the letters.

I kept them because I always thought I would read them, but I'll never read them now because of her vision problems.

She had glaucoma and macular degeneration, so I said, well, I'll read them to you.

And I couldn't imagine there would be that many letters because I'm thinking here's a 22-year-old guy

and he's really going to write his mother every day. But when she told me where the box was,

I went down into the basement and brought it up and dusted it off. And when I opened it up,

...