To the editor:

I just want to encourage everyone to keep the e-mail you get from and send to any soldiers you correspond with who are participating in the war in Iraq. People today don’t write letters like they used to, so if we don’t save our e-mail there won’t be any letters from soldiers for scholars to draw from in the future. Sure, there will be the “official” record of what happened, but very few personal stories. It’s the personal stories that make history come alive and make it interesting. You might think your correspondence isn’t important enough to keep, or is only important to you, but the Civil War soldiers whose letters are so critical to research today would have thought the same thing. So, print out your e-mail and KEEP IT! Saving it on your machine is fine, but remember that changes in technology might make it inaccessible in the future (this is a problem that archives face already — remember disks?), and computers can “crash.” Save them!

If for no other reason than to pass them on to your family. Think about it. Future generations will not know what its like to go through “grandma’s attic” and discover long forgotten letters. They won’t be there to find – unless you make sure you put them there! The Kansas State Historical Society has a wonderful Web site that illustrates how important letters are to future generations and scholars.

The site is .

Kathy Lafferty,

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