I recently found a letter my dad wrote to my mom on the day after Mother’s Day 1954, while he was serving in the final weeks of the Korean War, looking forward to returning to his bride and the daughter he had not yet met.

An excerpt:

“Something I’ve noticed for a long time over here is the noticeable effect of a lack of female influence — a civilizing influence best describes it. I would hate to think of an extended era without the influence of loved women. Men become beasts enough in just a year without the guidance of the fair and mother sex. You would be surprised how much civilization leaves many of these people over here…. 

A long time ago I realized what you brought to me with all your womanliness and sympathy for the world, but I never realized how hungry aggressive manhood is for the stabilizing, civilizing qualities of good women. The theory that in our women lies the destiny of our culture gains strength in the light of what I see here.

Maybe you read the article in that Saturday Review Reader that you sent me called “The Superiority of Women,” that I want to read again before I send the book home. It follows the thinking that I’ve been expounding above very well. This all becomes very personal when you apply it to your own life and the daughters and sons that you and I will give the next generation. Gives you an extra sense of mission toward mankind. The immediate objection is that you will affect only a very few people. But revolutions of all kinds are based on a few and the power of love transmitted to others has been proven by no less a personage than Christ Himself….

Yours completely, in Christ, Jamie”