Pen Pal’s Gift Leaves Couple Shipshape

Put us at a big table, Cylvia and Harvey Blate told the cruise ship’s maitre d’.

On the warm Caribbean waters, the cruise-loving couple wanted to meet new friends who would shout “Hey, Harv!” at the pool and sip pina coladas with Cylvia on the deck at sunset. So at a table for 10, the Laguna Hills couple took seats across from a tall, lean schoolteacher named Bill Fritts. He wore thick glasses and a goofy paper crown aboard the Nordic Prince on that night in 1975.

That meeting led to a pen pal friendship of sorts that continued for 17 years, though the Blates never learned much about their shipboard companion other than that he was a teacher with a passion for gardening. It wasn’t until Fritts’ death in 1992 that the Blates learned of the regard in which he held them: He had left them a trust fund totaling $30,000, to be used solely for cruising.

“I didn’t even know he had money,” said Cylvia, 75.

“You say, ‘What’s the catch?’ ” said Harvey, 76.

The bequeathal came just when the Blates were forced to close their clothing boutique in Anaheim after 26 years because of the recession. Cylvia and Harvey tried to close out the books, pay off bills, keep up their spirits. They were too busy and tired to think about Bill’s money. Finally, Cylvia listened to one of her sons, an attorney, who had read Bill’s will.

“Mom, cruise!” he implored.

So they did.

On Bill’s tab, the Blates cruised to Russia, where they put on caps with stuffed frogs hanging over the brim, and to Panama, where a young woman pinned a flag of the country to Harvey’s hat. And on each cruise, they sat down with strangers and said, “You won’t believe how we got here.”

Next month, the Blates will take a cruise to Mexico, their first high-seas trip since the trust fund ran out last year. Of course, they will ask for a big table again, but as the years go by, it seems that people are keeping to themselves.

What’s the point if you can’t throw your troubles onto the water and get in with a new crowd? On one cruise, Cylvia met a bandleader and set him up on a date. And of course, there was Fritts.

“We didn’t know it was going to be like it was,” said Harvey of the eventual friendship.

The funny thing is, in all those letters and phone calls to Fritts, the Blates never mentioned how much they loved to take cruises. Both enjoy the water so much that they even take walks in the rain.

When the two met, Harvey was a bread salesman from Long Island and Cylvia was a secretary from Duluth, Minn.

They started to book cruises 35 years ago, when their four kids were still little. As a young couple, they had to pay off their trips in installments.

“I just thought the rich always went on cruises,” Cylvia said. “I wanted to see what it felt like. I thought it must be wonderful, sitting on all those lawn chairs.”

Back then, streamers fluttered from the port until the ship sailed off, and the deck rocked with noisemakers until the passengers went to their rooms, where a chocolate or rose waited on their pillows. On deck, the world seemed a little less lonely because strangers sat down at your table and asked, “What did you do ashore today?”--and listened. That’s how it was with Fritts.

On the night they met, in 1975, Cylvia was in pain from a root canal. She could barely chew. All week, Fritts asked how she was feeling. When the Blates got home, they found a letter waiting from him. He was checking on Cylvia.

Over the years, Cylvia and Fritts wrote a few times each month. He wrote about his students at an Oakland school, and how he puttered in his garden and house. He mentioned an aunt and cousin but no close friends.

“I just thought it was a casual thing,” Harvey said.

The Blates know Fritts taught business but aren’t even sure which grade. They think he was in his early 60s.

Fritts’ last letters to the couple were sad. He wrote that he was sick with chills and bleeding sores. He didn’t say what his illness was, and the Blates did not ask.

Even the executor of Fritts’ estate, Doug Dow, hadn’t seen him for 31 years. Dow went to college with Fritts in Austin.

“He was very private,” Dow said. “He and I discussed football and the University of Texas . . . and that was about it.”

Fritts’ attorney, Edward Winslow, said he didn’t know why Fritts had left money to the Blates. Neither do Cylvia and Harvey.

The trust fund aside, they had an old-fashioned friendship with Fritts, one that began when strangers talked to strangers and blossomed with handwritten letters. Now when the Blates board cruise ships, they see people head straight for the bar and stay there until last call.

They wonder if they will ever see the likes of a Bill Fritts again.