Rockland: Parents' love seen in 1,200 WWI letters

Marjorie Jamison Douglas was visiting her mother one day in the early 1970s and found her preparing to burn a trove of letters she and her husband had exchanged during a World War I courtship when they both served in France.

Douglas implored her mother to spare the letters — some 1,200 pieces of correspondence on unlined stationery — that told a story that was at once intimate and historic. Her mother relented, as long as her daughter promised to keep the most personal details private.

But it wasn't until years later that Douglas began a decade-long process of transcribing seven boxes of hand-written letters and arranging them chronologically.

"Whenever I would mention (the letters), somebody would say, 'You should write a book,'" Douglas recounted. "So, finally in 2013, I was diagnosed with macular degeneration and I thought to myself, 'If I'm ever going to do this I better do it now because I don't know how long I'm going to have my eyesight.'"

It took two more years to turn the correspondence into a memoir, "Pidge and Jamie: Two Lives Transformed By Love and War," which she recently published at age 90.

"It was a real love story," she said recently sitting in her Sparkill home. "They were devoted to each other all their lives."

"I was learning a lot from these letters about their war experiences," she continued. "My mother had told me some, but not all that I got from these letters. My father too, he didn't really talk about his war experiences at all. So I learned a lot about what he had been through."

Love, interrupted

Marjorie "Pidge" Carr and Robert "Jamie" Jamison met and fell in love in Cleveland, but just 10 days after they became engaged he was gone. Jamie had joined the National Guard and was called up for duty in 1916 along the Mexican border, where Germany was trying to stir up trouble in hopes of involving Mexico in a war with the United States.

Pidge wrote Jamie in the summer of 1916 of how wrenching it had been to bid him farewell at the train station:

"I shall never forgive the powers that be for taking you off on such a heavenly day. Really it wouldn't have seemed so bad if it had been horrid weather, but I shall always feel we were cheated out of a wonderful trip to someplace."

Jamie quickly wrote back:

"I was very proud of you at the station, you were so smiling and pleasant and just your own usual brave self."

In October of 1916, he wrote from the border of how vital their correspondence had become:

"You will never know how much your letters mean to me in this environment. They are a link to all the best in my life and a daily reminder I have something more than my present duties to look forward to. They are a breath of fresh air in an overwrought and stupid atmosphere."

While Jamie served stateside and trained for his unit's eventual deployment overseas, Pidge joined the Smith College Relief Unit on a volunteer relief mission to France from August 1917 to February 1918.

No sooner was she on the Atlantic voyage to France, Pidge wrote of her deep attachment to Jamie:

"I miss you - more than I thought I could - I wish just awfully that you were here. You can't write too often to please me & although I can't promise to write every day - I'll write twice a week at least."

Pigde's Aug. 17 letter details the profound effect a first-hand look at the terrible consequences of war had on her:

 "It seems like a different world from the Paris I used to know. I sat on the Champs-Elysees for a while yesterday and I couldn't stand it any longer, seeing the wounded men go by, and the young women all dressed up in deep mourning. But last night I saw something worse. We went to help in the Red Cross canteen at the station where the men go back to the front - and - the haunted looks in their eyes I can never forget - some were crying."

While overseas, Pidge sent word to Jamie that after a long period of uncertainty, she had accepted his marriage proposal. He quickly responded:

"My joy knew no bounds when I read your letter ... I knew from the tone of your letter that you had made your decision after a calm consideration of all the circumstances, and that you truly knew your mind, and deeply felt your desires."

The couple married in the spring of 1918 but by that summer Jamie was deployed to Europe for what would be the war's final days.

When the fighting suddenly ended, Jamie saw soldiers who had been shelling each other just hours before trading cigarettes, candy and souvenirs. He described his feelings in a letter written Nov. 11, 1918 — the day the Armistice was signed:

"Peace, the word looms large on everyone's tongues and yet it hardly seems possible. Everything is so different and yet I can scarcely believe that it is all over and that before many months I may be again home."

Life on location

If the memoir seems like a cinematic tale, perhaps it's because Douglas has seen so many of them unfold in her own home.

She and her late husband, Henry, originally hail from Cleveland but move East in the 1960s. While living in Bergen County, New Jersey, she began opening her home to filming commercials and TV shows. The business grew and eventually they began looking for a larger house.

In 1981 they bought a small Dutch farmhouse dating from 1756 that was in disrepair and restored and expanded it into a 20-room homestead they named the Douglas House.

Douglas lives on the home's third floor, with the first and second level set aside for filming. The home features the large rooms and high ceilings required for shooting, and tricks like a sliding "wild wall" that reveals a bathroom behind it.

The first of hundreds of commercials and TV shows was shot in July 1981 — for Ajax cleanser.

The home has hosted the filming of everything from "Saturday Night Live" parodies to a dozen wild animals under the care of zookeeper Jack Hanna. The crew that shot a Butterball commercial once left behind 36 turkeys stuffed with wet paper towels.

The walls in a second-floor room hold photos of some of the celebrities who've filmed there, including Robert Stack, Miley Cyrus, John Ritter, Amy Schumer, Florence Henderson and E.G. Marshall. Douglas once had to ask Robin Leach to snuff out his cigar.

"I find it loads of fun," she said of living in a location house. "When we shoot it's with lots of young people, interesting people. I love talking to them. Everybody has a story to tell."

A memoir of love and war

• Who: Margorie Jamison Douglas
• What: "Pidge and Jamie: Two Lives Transformed By Love and War," published by Lulu Press
• Where: Available at Pickwick Bookshop in Nyack and through lulu.com.

Robert Brum is a columnist and editor of The Rockland Angle, a nightly email newsletter exclusively for Rockland County news, features and other essential information. To sign up for The Angle, visit lohud.com/newsletters, check the "Rockland Angle" box and submit your email address.

Twitter: @Bee_bob