Despite being able to spend Thanksgiving at home with his family, Elmer’s holiday was overshadowed by developments in his love life. He and Rose had their first fight.
Both parted ways in a huff, and no one blinked for two weeks afterwards. Then Rose broke the silence with a letter. Grandpa did not keep it, as far as I could tell – I have not processed any of Rose’s letters yet beyond arranging them chronologically by envelope, so it could be buried someplace within that pile – so I don’t know what she said. But Elmer’s letter in response is revealing:
Believe me, it was very good to hear from you again. Rose, I am all kinds of a silly, stupid proud jack-ass. Yes, I was very much angry at you for what happened at your house. And you hit it on the head when you said it was ‘silly pride’ – and mostly on my part. Perhaps in a way you were a little to blame, but I owe you the apology, dear. Do you think we can both forget it ever happened? And pick up where we left off.”
Elmer Luckett to Rose Schmid, 14 December 1943
Elmer continued by telling Rose that he was “tempted to call [her] several times, but was too bull-headed,” and that he regretted not meeting her brother, Ray, who was in town for the holidays as well.
Without knowing what precipitated the fight (perhaps that is something my dad or uncle could shed some light on?), there were other issues that may have set the stage for a confrontation. One potential problem may have been Elmer’s visit with Shirley Ryder, who was apparently also competing for Elmer’s affections. Shirley visited St. Louis with her parents over Thanksgiving, and during that time they went out. Her parents wrote his parents on November 30th, thanking them for their hospitality and noting that Elmer and Shirley appeared to have fun together. In his December 2nd letter home, Elmer alluded to his active social calendar during his previous leave, which may have included other dates or outings that could be mistaken for dates: “I bum around so much that you saw little of me. But you understand.”
Elmer’s ambivalence about Rose moving to Washington, D.C. to accept her new Navy Department job may have been another factor. While he was clearly happy for and proud of Rose for making such a big decision, he also worried about what would happen once she was even farther removed from him. Whenever Elmer would make it back to St. Louis Rose would no longer be there waiting for him. This surely came as a disappointment. One passage in his November 9th letter to Rose seems to hint at these various feelings:
Well honey, you are going to work for the Navy. You sounded very happy and well-pleased, and I’m happy for you also. That gives us another interest in common, sugar. I know you will be doing well. You had me worried about going to California, and then you start heading East. You will be on your own, honey, so be careful and good. Perhaps I didn’t show it very well, but I couldn’t ever see you any other way than a quiet, respectable young lady.So much for that, darling.”
Elmer Luckett to Rose Schmid, 9 November 1943
In other words, Elmer was happy that she was going on her own adventure and that she would be representing the Navy, but he also worried that her independence as well as her new address would distance them. He was also apparently concerned about her non-exclusivity – a courtesy he was not yet willing to show himself – and couched those anxieties in his remark about her respectability.
While there is a great deal to parse here with respect to both Elmer and Rose’s gender expectations and role-playing, for the present it may suffice to say that his letter on December 14th was a sweet mea culpa (if not entirely an admission of guilt on his part). At the very least he sweated the past few weeks out. “You signed, ‘as ever, Rose,'” he pointed out at the end of his letter. “That means you haven’t changed [your feelings] in regards to me.”
Rose wrote him back, and Elmer penned his reply on the 22nd. “So you are getting ‘salty’ now,” he teased at one point. But he didn’t tease too much. “No doubt I’ll be thinking of the evenings you were in my arms.”
The New Year brought uncertainty for the couple and their future, even as both Elmer and Rose prepared to embark on new wartime adventures. They would see very little of one another until after the end of the war – indeed, they would be on near opposite sides of the globe. But the letters continued to fly, and they must have been pretty good: by early 1945, as the end of the war approached, Elmer began to close his correspondences with his other bachelorette pen pals. He had made his choice. And Rose seemingly knew the outcome all along.
Note: From now on I am going to combine the two correspondences – Elmer’s letters to his parents and those letters he wrote to Rose – in order to craft a more cohesive narrative. At some point in the next month or two I will post separately about Rose and her own letter-writing style, but I will integrate her letters into the narrative as well.
Next Entry:
January 1944: Shakedown
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