Hearts of Long-Ago Pen Pals Bridge Time and Distance

It was the spring of ’42 and they were two kids living on two continents when pen and paper--and a school assignment--brought them together.

She was 14, a student in Miss Frady’s class here, when the eighth-graders were asked to select a pen pal from a list of kids in England. It was a small way of uniting teenagers during the war.

He was 14 too, a grocery errand boy outside London, when he began writing her.

They had little in common. She was a fresh-faced girl who rarely strayed far from her father’s farm. He was a war-weary boy who dreamed of traveling the world even as he hunkered down in a dark, drafty bomb shelter.

But the two found enough to write about for years.

They exchanged photos too. He was rakish, with dimples, a slight gap in his front teeth and hair slicked back like Ray Milland. She was demure, with alabaster skin, soft chestnut curls and a dreamy gaze.

When the war ended and he was in the Royal Navy, he wrote to say he wanted to visit her in Iowa. She told her fiance, who quickly laid down the law: no more letters.

It seemed the pen pals would never cross paths again.

*

“Dear Sir or Madam,

“I am writing to see if you can help me in my plight. During the war years, I was writing to a girl [as a pen friend]. . . . Her name was then Miss Colleen Lee. . . . If you could by any chance trace her for me, I would be very grateful. ...

“Yours truly,

“Geoffrey W. Lake”

The letter was dated Oct. 19, 1989, and now, almost 10 years later, Geoffrey still can’t say precisely why he decided to look up his old pen pal.

He was 61, happily married for decades to his wife, Eileen, with a grown son, Michael. But something tugged at the retired factory worker.

“It was in the back of my mind all these years,” he says. “I’d often wondered what had become of Colleen, what she was doing, where she was. One night I decided I’ve got to find out.”

He didn’t remember Colleen’s address but couldn’t forget her hometown’s distinctive name. So he addressed the envelope:

The Mayor’s Parlor

Soldier, Iowa

With just 250 souls in Soldier, there are no strangers. It turned out the mayor and Colleen were good friends. She was now Colleen Straight, having long ago married her childhood sweetheart, Harvey.

The Straights, who had lived in California and Virginia, had returned to this western Iowa hamlet 17 years earlier; Harvey ran the local steakhouse. By 1989, their three children were adults, having children of their own.

Geoffrey, meanwhile, had circled the globe, from Bali to the Panama Canal, Canada to Holland, first with the navy, then on his own. But he always migrated back to the same area, 45 minutes from London.

He and Eileen were planning to visit the United States when his note arrived in Soldier.

“I’ve got this letter from some fellow in England,” the mayor told Colleen.

She smiles as she remembers that day:

“I knew right away who it was.”

*

“Dear Geoff,

“What a surprise! I believe it’s 45 years since we corresponded . . . “

Where to begin? Colleen dashed off a breezy three-page letter describing her family and where they had lived over the years. She also invited Geoffrey and Eileen to Soldier.

And she signed off:

“Your pen pal, Colleen”

Back in Waltham Abbey, Geoffrey was thrilled.

And so they began corresponding again. They shared over-the-fence tidbits about daily life, everything from details about a family wedding to Geoffrey’s woozy adventure with triple brandies on a vacation in Las Vegas.

They always signed their letters as couples.

Colleen and Harvey. Eileen and Geoff.

There was no romance. “It was a friendship all the way through,” Geoffrey says.

Not that there wasn’t some good-natured ribbing when the mail arrived.

“Harvey would say, ‘You got another letter from your boyfriend,’ ” Colleen recalls.

Geoffrey’s wife did the same.

Again they exchanged photos, this time showing their families and their houses. Then in December 1992, Colleen had sad news.

“This is not an easy letter to write,” she confided. “I lost Harvey. . . . I know I must not dwell on his passing, but I do think of it a lot.”

Geoffrey responded with a condolence card, and one each year on the anniversary of Harvey’s death.

Geoffrey and Eileen’s plans to visit Colleen the next year fell through, but the letters continued.

Then in November 1997, Geoffrey’s wife of 45 years died.

This time, Colleen did the consoling.

*

“Dear Geoff and Michael,

It’s difficult at this sad time to find the right words to comfort you. You will find yourself thinking of all the things you have done together and that helps a lot. . . . Just be thankful you had a good life together.”

On a January night a year ago, a downcast Geoffrey dialed his phone. He was tempted to hang up before a little girl answered in a cozy living room 4,300 miles away.

“Grandmother, somebody I can’t understand wants to talk to you,” 10-year-old Ashley said, handing Colleen the receiver.

“Hello, Colleen, do you know who this is?” the caller asked.

His clipped accent gave him away.

For the first time in 56 years the childhood correspondents spoke to each other.

“After hearing his voice, I think I felt he was real,” Colleen says. “Before, it was just pen and pencil.”

They talked for a while, and at the end, Colleen recalls, “He said, ‘Goodbye, love.’ I really took that to heart. I thought, boy . . . he means business! But that’s just an everyday phrase in England.”

Still, she says, “It sort of melted my heart.”

Geoffrey wanted to visit her, though Colleen felt it was too soon for the new widower. So she delicately put him off.

But their calls and letters picked up. Weekly, twice weekly, daily. Then two, three times a day.

Their words became more tender, their thoughts more intimate.

“We more or less . . .,” Geoffrey begins.

” . . . struck up a romance,” Colleen finishes his sentence.

Their letters began with “My darling” and “My love.” They ended with a string of X’s for kisses.

Still, the two had never even spent an hour together.

“We talked about maybe we wouldn’t like one another at all,” Colleen says. “We had no idea what our temperaments would really be like. You can’t tell that by letter writing.”

Still, he persisted, and finally she agreed to meet him.

“In the end,” he says, “I won the day.”

*

“My darling Colleen,

“It sounds a bit ridiculous the way we feel about one another. Here we are, both approaching the age of 70 and carrying on as though we are teenagers but honey, I’ve got a young heart and cannot express my feelings any other way. I love it and I love you, honey.

“Roll on May 28!”

That was the date they agreed to meet in New York.

The appointed place was the customs desk at Kennedy airport. Geoffrey said he’d be carrying a Tesco bag (the name of a British supermarket). Inside was a bottle of champagne and a fruitcake the former navy chef had made to woo her with his baking talents.

“Turned out quite good,” he boasts.

When Colleen’s plane was 3 1/2 hours late, Geoffrey worried he had been stood up. Then he saw a 5-foot woman with short brown hair approaching.

He recognized the bejeweled denim outfit she had described.

She spotted the supermarket bag.

“Our eyes met,” Colleen says. “We embraced.”

“It was love at first sight,” Geoffrey adds.

They spent three days touring New York before heading to Iowa, where he met her family. Then it was off to Mount Rushmore--where they bought friendship rings decorated with hearts.

Everything clicked. There was no tension, no shyness, no awkwardness.

“We just talked as if we had been meeting for some time,” says Geoffrey, a wiry man with blue-gray eyes and a healthy shock of silver-and-black hair.

In no time, Geoffrey decided to move to Iowa. He returned home to settle some personal matters; then, on his first night back last September, he bent on one knee and proposed to Colleen.

“I said yes!” she recalls, turning to Geoffrey as they sit at their kitchen table. “I didn’t even stop to think about it, did I?”

He leans in, puffs his Marlboro Light, then quietly offers his own recollection:

“Teary-eyed, she was.”

*

Two flags--the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack--flutter outside the white-frame house at the end of the road.

Inside, Geoffrey, wearing a gold-and-black Iowa Hawkeyes sweatshirt, marvels at the turn of events.

“A half century and we’re together again--well, not again, we’re now together,” he says.

“It seems like a fairy tale,” Colleen says. “People say it was just meant to be. And we’re both happier for it.”

“More than happy,” Geoffrey adds.

On Nov. 28, the wartime pen pals became husband and wife. They sent out word to friends and family:

“A reception honoring the newlyweds Colleen and Geoff will be on Saturday. . . .”

It was their first joint correspondence.