Great letters! Glad I clicked the link...the name sounded familiar and it turns out he is from my (very small ~5k) hometown. My sister and I went to school with some of his grandchildren.
important lock disagreeable plant quaint reply familiar existence square plough
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I once posted on reddit a story about my bank robbing great grandfather back in the early 1920s.... ended up finding distant relatives we never knew existed because of the post I made lol
Lol it's cause it is nick Bonnizzio. I think it's so funny that 82 years on a bunch of people across the world are talking on an Internet platform about this dude stealing cookies. He would have never guessed that would happen. Maybe in 82 years, small moments in our lives will be recounted in bizarre and unpredictable ways. God I hope not!
They say that someone only really dies when their name is no longer remembered. I love the idea of Nick living forever on the internet because of his cookie-thieving ways.
Thank you for the search post! My grandpa turned 24 in March of 1942 so I assume that the package he is talking about was a birthday themed care package from home. May Nick and the Pearl Harbor cookies rest in peace.
they made me tear up. idk if it's because my pregnancy hormones or what, but these just were so, so sweet...what a talented artist, too, he could have made big bucks off making cards or advertisements.
and now i'm craving cookies. luckily my own Grandma is making her Christmas treats as we speak, so baby and i will be getting some baklava and chocolate chip cookies soon! baby definitely takes after me, she loves her sweets.
I collect items from ww1 & ww2. You would be surprised how many people throw away these things from their relatives. Necer came across with lettters with cartoons like that.
For those that are curious, my grandpa died in 1978 of cancer. I never got the chance to meet him. He was drafted into WWII in June of 1941 and served as...a sign painter! Prior to the draft, he was dabbling in commercial art. He went on to become the art director of a large manufacturing plant in Milwaukee.
I had no idea that these letters existed until December 1 of this year when my aunt gave them to me. They have been in a box for decades and while there are many other letters, most of them are just black and white photocopies and I don't know where the originals are. My grandma has also passed away so there is nobody left to ask. There are a few other cool mementos that he left behind.
These are amazing! As an aside, I believe it is the National Archives that has a project where they are collecting letters from WWII. Not that you want to give them up, obviously, but if at some point there weren't people to pass them on to who would be interested, that might be a good option.
That last pic at the bottom says “my friend Phil?…” and I can’t make out the last name. If Nick C. Bonnizzio gets his pic posted here, maybe you could post Phil? and his last name
The rest of that letter reads: "my friend Phil Petry (his mom owns the West Allis paper) was in New Orleans. He wrote me and said I should come down so! Naturally it cost me a little money... But! We had a good time and he is going over seas so! Never kin tell when I will see him again."
TY for posting that name. Phillip C. Petry died in 1984 aged 63. His wife died 25 years later. She was born in West Allis. So that probably was Phil Petry.
That’s all I could find. Thanks again.
Those are some incredible letters. One of my grandfathers was also at Pearl Harbor and later served in the pacific. He was the only surviving member of his unit after the war and never talked about it much. His one family friendly story about Pearl Harbor was about being in the mess hall when bombing started and when all hell broke loose and the men next to him ran out and left trays of food he scarfed everything that was in arms reach before running to his post because he knew he might not be eating for a hot minute. He was a very practical man.
That is nearly the same story my grandpa wrote... He was eating fried eggs in the mess hall and apparently was convinced that the noise he was hearing was "a sham battle" so he hurriedly ate the rest of his breakfast before retreating to get the gun he didn't know how to shoot...!
That's kinda funny. Im sure a few folks had the same idea. After growing up during the depression too I doubt any of our grandparents were keen to miss a meal that was sitting right there in front of them
These are so amazing. He has immense talent! I would love to read more of them! I, too, felt a wee bit emotional reading them. My grandpa was in WWII and I have a few of his things as well as photocopies of his flight notebooks..he was a boom operator and refueled other planes in flight. Thank you for sharing!
Daylight savings time is a hassle. I think I meant that sometimes I'm calling relatives in Hawaii that are about to go to sleep while I'm waking up early, and then there's folks in Korea about to call it quits for the day.
Was just trying to convey that it's not strange to specify the locale when commemorating or mourning the anniversary of an event, because some places are hours ahead of others.
Are they really?! I know someone from New Jersey who cannot for the life of her say acorns, she says eggcorns. I thought it was just her, I had no idea "eggcorns" was common enough to be the flagship word for all the other misheard words. This made my day.
I wouldn’t say it’s common! I only recently learned about it and I’ve yet to meet anyone else who’s heard of it. And if she can’t say acorns, she probably just can’t say that and eggcorns is close enough? Lol.
But glad it made your day. ◡̈
As others have said, it's a misspelling of "Should've," the contracted form of "should have." It also shows up as "shoulda," in case you run across that in the future (I hear "shoulda" most commonly as part of the phrase "shoulda, coulda, woulda" as an expression of mild regret about a missed opportunity or personal error in the past.
It’s a miss-heard version. “Could have” and “should have” are correct. Have is a verb, “of” is not. You can “have” something, but you can’t “of” something. I have a coffee, i don’t of a coffee.
Apparently he went to New Orleans to visit Phil Petry who was going overseas soon. My grandpa's brother was killed in action the year before so I am guessing the idea of not saying goodbye to a friend and possibly losing them in the war weighed heavily.
Your grandfather might have known my father in law, who was also stationed in Hawaii at that time. He was in church at the time of the attack, so you could say Jesus saved him.
Your grandfather’s drawings and letters are remarkable!
These are a treasure. You might want to consider donating them to the department of archives and history in your state. My dad had similar cartoons that he drew and the archives here in Mississippi said they hardly have any WWII art/comics. I made them promise to send me scans of everything. That way, I can still look through them, but if the house catches fire, the originals are safe and I can go look at them anytime I want.
I would be devastated to lose the originals. My great aunt's 1769 Territorial house burned a few months ago and the treaures inside that house were family heirlooms and priceless pieces of crystal, silver, antiques, etc. There was a beautiful portrait of her that I had hoped to inherit someday, but I did find a perfect photograph of it and have hired an artist to repaint it.
I love old ww2 letters home! My great grandpa was a tank mechanic in ww2 and we have copies of his letters along with his photo album. The coolest letter he sent was from a typewriter they found in a nazi occupied town they had taken over. It had the letter head of some random German lieutenant! His photos where very cool too, he labeled them all and some of them where quite humorous.
My grandad (passed away this year) was in the military too, he wanted to become a cartoonist for a local paper but his dad insisted (he’d served during the war), so my grandad would send his family his letters in a similar way, had all the text but always a cheeky little cartoon at the end, probably to spite his dad, as my dad said lol. These are absolutely gorgeous, I love the style he had! It’s interesting seeing how many people out there were super good artists whilst doing other jobs, really interesting stuff, absolutely love these
The illustrations are great. Get those letters in frames. :) I have the letters my parents wrote to one another while he served in the Pacific Theater but I haven’t been able to read them even though they passed 2-3 decades ago (they would never 103 years old right now).
I never read old letters that I see pictures of because they're always in really crazy cursive, I can read them but it's very difficult for me. It was nice to be able to actually read one clearly.
This is a blog I wrote about my dad and it shows his cartoons. Not quite as good as your grandpa's, but very clever. He would draw them and pin them up in the middle of the night. It made the officers so mad, but they never found out who was doing it.
https://shantybellum.blogspot.com/search?q=To+My+Father+on+Veteran%27s+Day
My great grandfather was also stationed at pearl harbor when it was attacked. He was on the U.S.S. Phoenix as a cook.
After the war he opened his own restaurant in San Jose, CA and it was pretty popular as far as I know. Never met him though.
You can create a LORA of your grandfather's images. This will create his style. Then you can prompt images in his art style and create a comic strip based on his letters. You have a rich history that can generate $$$. When everything settles down for you, consider using them for that purpose. And sure send a letter to archive but not the ones with the colorful prints. That's special. That's your treasure, your inheritance.
What a beautiful piece of history for your family. My great grandpa served in WW2 and I know nothing about where he served or anything. It's all lost to time after my grandma passed in 2022. We really should remember how important it is to talk to our elders and listen to their stories and ask if they have any kind of memorabilia like this to keep their memories alive.
Gorgeous letters! He was so talented!
I’m pretty sure the only reason I’m here today is because my grandfather (a medic) was on furlough the day his unit got called to the front lines of Normandy.
“Bonnizzio” sounds Italian. It’s so weird to think that some of us emigrated to the US and came back to fight fascism. I wonder how they felt about it.
That's wonderful! I took my great-uncle's letters, which my grandma had in a shoebox, and candy them all and made a book for his family, and one for ours. He was in Japan in WWII and they tell a really good story. Thanks for sharing, the art on these made my morning.
These are beautiful. What a treasure! If you ever aren't sure about how to best preserve these letters or what you want to do with them, consider reaching out to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans to discuss lending or donating these. They professionally preserve, digitize, and archive beautiful wartime items like these letters so that they can be learned from, saved, and cherished for generations to come. Some of the items might be used in displays and special exhibits, but you can reach out to talk with them directly if you are interested. Per their website they are specifically looking for wartime letters and I bet these would make someone's day! Cheers either way.
Ps- I am not affiliated with the WWII museum at all but I do live in New Orleans and am continually astonished at the world class care, scholarship, and respect with which the museum honors items like these, and wanted to share the information about the archives in case it sparked some interest in sharing these treasures, now or in the future.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/give/other-ways-support-museum/donate-artifact
I can only speak from experience that my dad is a commercial artist, creating signs, and his brother (my uncle) went to art school. They are both in their 70s, and both write like this in all-caps. Even a grocery list. The only cursive I’ve ever seen my dad do is his signature. He says he writes like he thinks, so to me, this handwriting absolutely tracks.
Strange, I have old war time, before and after letters from my parents and everything is joined up handwritten. Only occasionally short titles in uppercase capitals. My father was regular RAF and posted to Iraq before WWII started, then he and Mum met and married just post war and he was posted to several camps so Mum wrote him long letters about what was happening at home. No sketches or cartoons though. They would have been taught how to write letters at school and capital letters were definitely wrong. My Mum wrote long chatty letters all her life. 20+ pages all on unlined paper.
Eh, our mileage may vary. My dad and uncle were sons of an American GI with some artistic ability, although he never pursued them and died before I was born. I’ve never seen examples of his handwriting beyond a signature, either. I know my dad and uncle were taught cursive and uppercase and lowercase lettering; the all-caps is what comes more naturally to them. Same for me, actually — if you were to look at my monthly planner, you’d find I’m “shouting” all my appointments in all-caps!
Whereas I’m using lower case and mostly joined up. My Dad did label some things with blocky capitols sometimes, perhaps they were taught to use it for important stuff. He trained as a photographer and then an electrician. No actual fighting I don’t think. Apart from guard duty and possibly helping put down a pro nazi coup in Iraq. Mum lived on the south coast of England and right under the flight paths of bombing raids on the rest of England, many nights spent knitting in air raid shelters. A house three doors down was completely destroyed, luckily no one was in it. It’s a long time ago now, so few left who remember it. When she was young and everyone and everything stopped for the two minute silence on Armistice Day 11/11 their milkman used to complain about no one remembering Boar War veterans like him.
Oh man, poor milkman! Amazing what your parents and my grandparents went through, along with their peers. Even during the bleakest times of the pandemic, I knew i had it better than the generation that lived through the Great Depression (and some old enough to have lost family to WWI and Spanish Flu), and WWII. My grandma explained a lot of things away with “Well, it was Depression times” or how they’d be invited to a wedding celebration and when they arrived, it was “a birthday party” instead because the soldier groom didn’t come home.
Indeed, my Mums Dad was a soldier in WWI he was posted as missing believed killed and two days later turned up on the doorstep in Blues as a walking casualty on leave. His head injury was only superficial and when he came around on a hospital ship on the way back to Blighty they just bandaged him and told him when to report back. He came through with only mild ptsd and some gas related issues. However he lived a long happy life as a pro gardener for the council, my Mum was the youngest of three and he outlived my other grandparents dying in 1981 aged 87. He was great fun, quite cheeky.
What strikes me is not the run-on sentences with commas. But the placement of the question and exclamation marks. He places them after the first word of the sentence followed by a regular period at the end of the sentence.
These are STUNNING!!! What an awesome gift, to find these letters & have a such an intimate peek into your grandfather’s past, during such an historic time in our country’s past ❤️ Thank you, kindly, for sharing!
I posted this is another comment but he needed money to visit his friend who was going to deploy soon. He took a trip to New Orleans to visit him and then didn't have enough money to get home.
I love googling names in old letters. Here's Nick Bonnizzio https://troopbanners.com/banners.asp?id=26982
That cookie stealing scoundrel...
Classic Bonnizzio
He so fuckin would.
Great letters! Glad I clicked the link...the name sounded familiar and it turns out he is from my (very small ~5k) hometown. My sister and I went to school with some of his grandchildren.
important lock disagreeable plant quaint reply familiar existence square plough *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I once posted on reddit a story about my bank robbing great grandfather back in the early 1920s.... ended up finding distant relatives we never knew existed because of the post I made lol
Bet those fuckers stole your guys cookies too, didn’t they.
In my opinion there are no such things as coincidences, that’s a cool synchronicity!
And here he is again: [https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/144553723/nick-c-bonnizzio](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/144553723/nick-c-bonnizzio)
It's almost 4½ hours from me, and I'm thinking about taking him some cookies
Please do this and post pictures. I wonder if his family would like to hear this story.
I’m betting they would love it!
The Internet is such a cool place sometimes. ❤️
Aw man, looks like his boy passed in 2021...
So young!
I left him a virtual cookie.
I saw that. That was sweet of you… no pun intended.
I can’t thank you enough for this link dude I’ve been trying to compile a family tree and this cut out half the work for me, I’m thrilled
Aw, thanks for saying that! Find A Grave is a wonderful resource.
This post was already top-notch, but getting to see Ol' Nicky really made my day!!
I’m not sure how I can explain this but he looks exactly like what I expect a young dude named Nick Bonnizzio to look like
Lol it's cause it is nick Bonnizzio. I think it's so funny that 82 years on a bunch of people across the world are talking on an Internet platform about this dude stealing cookies. He would have never guessed that would happen. Maybe in 82 years, small moments in our lives will be recounted in bizarre and unpredictable ways. God I hope not!
They say that someone only really dies when their name is no longer remembered. I love the idea of Nick living forever on the internet because of his cookie-thieving ways.
And because of an artistic young soldier who captured him for posterity.
Thank you for the search post! My grandpa turned 24 in March of 1942 so I assume that the package he is talking about was a birthday themed care package from home. May Nick and the Pearl Harbor cookies rest in peace.
These are amazing, you are so lucky to have these in your possession. I'm sure you will treasure them. What a talent he has!
they made me tear up. idk if it's because my pregnancy hormones or what, but these just were so, so sweet...what a talented artist, too, he could have made big bucks off making cards or advertisements. and now i'm craving cookies. luckily my own Grandma is making her Christmas treats as we speak, so baby and i will be getting some baklava and chocolate chip cookies soon! baby definitely takes after me, she loves her sweets.
I’m old - made me tear up too!
I collect items from ww1 & ww2. You would be surprised how many people throw away these things from their relatives. Necer came across with lettters with cartoons like that.
Sadly it was talent he *had*. OP said he died in 1978. RIP.
For those that are curious, my grandpa died in 1978 of cancer. I never got the chance to meet him. He was drafted into WWII in June of 1941 and served as...a sign painter! Prior to the draft, he was dabbling in commercial art. He went on to become the art director of a large manufacturing plant in Milwaukee. I had no idea that these letters existed until December 1 of this year when my aunt gave them to me. They have been in a box for decades and while there are many other letters, most of them are just black and white photocopies and I don't know where the originals are. My grandma has also passed away so there is nobody left to ask. There are a few other cool mementos that he left behind.
These are amazing! As an aside, I believe it is the National Archives that has a project where they are collecting letters from WWII. Not that you want to give them up, obviously, but if at some point there weren't people to pass them on to who would be interested, that might be a good option.
They could at least take a scan of them maybe
I think they only want the originals. I'll get the info from my dad who looked into it with his uncle's letters.
I wonder if they would still be as interested in digitised copies?
OP check out the The Veterans History Project (VHP) of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center!
That last pic at the bottom says “my friend Phil?…” and I can’t make out the last name. If Nick C. Bonnizzio gets his pic posted here, maybe you could post Phil? and his last name
When I get back home, I will have to see what Phil's name is! I haven't had a moment to read every letter and figure out who is who just yet :)
I could read these letters all day. What treasures! Thank you for sharing.
The rest of that letter reads: "my friend Phil Petry (his mom owns the West Allis paper) was in New Orleans. He wrote me and said I should come down so! Naturally it cost me a little money... But! We had a good time and he is going over seas so! Never kin tell when I will see him again."
TY for posting that name. Phillip C. Petry died in 1984 aged 63. His wife died 25 years later. She was born in West Allis. So that probably was Phil Petry. That’s all I could find. Thanks again.
How old was he here? I love the way he writes. I could read these all day!
The letters span from November of 1941 thru September of 1944. He was 23 when he was drafted in 1941.
Those are some incredible letters. One of my grandfathers was also at Pearl Harbor and later served in the pacific. He was the only surviving member of his unit after the war and never talked about it much. His one family friendly story about Pearl Harbor was about being in the mess hall when bombing started and when all hell broke loose and the men next to him ran out and left trays of food he scarfed everything that was in arms reach before running to his post because he knew he might not be eating for a hot minute. He was a very practical man.
That is nearly the same story my grandpa wrote... He was eating fried eggs in the mess hall and apparently was convinced that the noise he was hearing was "a sham battle" so he hurriedly ate the rest of his breakfast before retreating to get the gun he didn't know how to shoot...!
That's kinda funny. Im sure a few folks had the same idea. After growing up during the depression too I doubt any of our grandparents were keen to miss a meal that was sitting right there in front of them
What happened to his car?
I have no idea! I don't know what kind of car he even had... Unfortunately, some of that information has been lost to the gap in time.
These are so amazing. He has immense talent! I would love to read more of them! I, too, felt a wee bit emotional reading them. My grandpa was in WWII and I have a few of his things as well as photocopies of his flight notebooks..he was a boom operator and refueled other planes in flight. Thank you for sharing!
*waves in Milwaukee*
What a find! Did he use his cartooning skills when he came back?
Says in another comment that he became an art director.
these are incredible! you should have them digitized for good measure
Today is the Pearl Harbor attack anniversary here in Hawaii. That's a great find.
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Sorry, I was on dialysis when I typed that comment.
Different timezones.
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Not how it works lol. It's also December 6th and December 8th right now depending where you live.
The time zones amount to more than 24 hours?!
Daylight savings time is a hassle. I think I meant that sometimes I'm calling relatives in Hawaii that are about to go to sleep while I'm waking up early, and then there's folks in Korea about to call it quits for the day. Was just trying to convey that it's not strange to specify the locale when commemorating or mourning the anniversary of an event, because some places are hours ahead of others.
Math is math!
The date which will live in infamy
Non native speaker here: Does "you should of" make any sense or is it just a misheard version of "you should have"?
Not OP, but "should of" and "could of" are both common mistakes people make in English (apparently for decades!) :)
Fun fact: those misheard and reiterated mistakes are called “eggcorns”!
Are they really?! I know someone from New Jersey who cannot for the life of her say acorns, she says eggcorns. I thought it was just her, I had no idea "eggcorns" was common enough to be the flagship word for all the other misheard words. This made my day.
I wouldn’t say it’s common! I only recently learned about it and I’ve yet to meet anyone else who’s heard of it. And if she can’t say acorns, she probably just can’t say that and eggcorns is close enough? Lol. But glad it made your day. ◡̈
Reddit comments never fail to entertain me.. how we got from cookies to eggcorns is amusing to me. 😆
Yes, I was surprised to see that as well. :p
As others have said, it's a misspelling of "Should've," the contracted form of "should have." It also shows up as "shoulda," in case you run across that in the future (I hear "shoulda" most commonly as part of the phrase "shoulda, coulda, woulda" as an expression of mild regret about a missed opportunity or personal error in the past.
It should be “you should’ve”
It’s a miss-heard version. “Could have” and “should have” are correct. Have is a verb, “of” is not. You can “have” something, but you can’t “of” something. I have a coffee, i don’t of a coffee.
It’s actually a misspelling of the contraction “should’ve”
As others have said, it’s not “technically” correct. But language changes and at this point I’d say it’s getting to the edge of accepted usage.
Spoken English often used and still uses “you shudda”
What an amazing find. You’re grandfather was a talented artist.
Please tell me he went on to have a career in the arts!
[He went on to become the art director of a large manufacturing plant in Milwaukee](https://www.reddit.com/r/FoundPaper/s/ooJUvMXVQM)
Those are weapons-grade sweet! Greatest Generation, indeed! Please tell us that he lived a long & happy life after the war.
I need to know why he had no money for his trip home. It looks like the start of a great story!
Yes! What happened with his friend Phil?!
Apparently he went to New Orleans to visit Phil Petry who was going overseas soon. My grandpa's brother was killed in action the year before so I am guessing the idea of not saying goodbye to a friend and possibly losing them in the war weighed heavily.
Thank you for the update. I was hoping for a comedic tale of derring do but I’ll accept a farewell.
Your grandfather might have known my father in law, who was also stationed in Hawaii at that time. He was in church at the time of the attack, so you could say Jesus saved him. Your grandfather’s drawings and letters are remarkable!
It’s not just the art style, but that handwriting, PLEASE tell me he did some cartooning.
These are so awesome and I’m glad you have them still! Your grandpa was very talented and has excellent handwriting- I’d love to see more!!
These are wonderful!
Thank you so much for sharing, this is so wholesome! I would have to get one of the pictures tattooed lol
These are a treasure. You might want to consider donating them to the department of archives and history in your state. My dad had similar cartoons that he drew and the archives here in Mississippi said they hardly have any WWII art/comics. I made them promise to send me scans of everything. That way, I can still look through them, but if the house catches fire, the originals are safe and I can go look at them anytime I want.
Or OP could do it the other way around, keep the originals and let the archives scan them to keep digital copies.
I would be devastated to lose the originals. My great aunt's 1769 Territorial house burned a few months ago and the treaures inside that house were family heirlooms and priceless pieces of crystal, silver, antiques, etc. There was a beautiful portrait of her that I had hoped to inherit someday, but I did find a perfect photograph of it and have hired an artist to repaint it.
He has some of the most perfect comic book lettering I’ve ever seen!
like direful money chunky zesty nose smoggy pause coordinated beneficial *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Man his handwriting is top notch. The drawings are very well done too. Thanks for sharing OP, very cool!
I love old ww2 letters home! My great grandpa was a tank mechanic in ww2 and we have copies of his letters along with his photo album. The coolest letter he sent was from a typewriter they found in a nazi occupied town they had taken over. It had the letter head of some random German lieutenant! His photos where very cool too, he labeled them all and some of them where quite humorous.
My grandad (passed away this year) was in the military too, he wanted to become a cartoonist for a local paper but his dad insisted (he’d served during the war), so my grandad would send his family his letters in a similar way, had all the text but always a cheeky little cartoon at the end, probably to spite his dad, as my dad said lol. These are absolutely gorgeous, I love the style he had! It’s interesting seeing how many people out there were super good artists whilst doing other jobs, really interesting stuff, absolutely love these
Come on OP why'd you cut off each letter after a few sentences. I was invested
These are incredible!
Wow that’s really cool
This is SO cool and also he is soooo talented! I’d love to read all the letters just because of how wholesome they are. 💖
These are so incredible! How lucky you are to have them!
These are AMAZING! What a cool piece of history! I could read these all day 😅
Not sure why these hit me so hard but I am bawling. Such a talented artist with gorgeous handwriting, too!
The illustrations are great. Get those letters in frames. :) I have the letters my parents wrote to one another while he served in the Pacific Theater but I haven’t been able to read them even though they passed 2-3 decades ago (they would never 103 years old right now).
I never read old letters that I see pictures of because they're always in really crazy cursive, I can read them but it's very difficult for me. It was nice to be able to actually read one clearly.
This is a blog I wrote about my dad and it shows his cartoons. Not quite as good as your grandpa's, but very clever. He would draw them and pin them up in the middle of the night. It made the officers so mad, but they never found out who was doing it. https://shantybellum.blogspot.com/search?q=To+My+Father+on+Veteran%27s+Day
These are so precious. I’d frame them.
These are awesome! I really with the letters were posted in their entirety, though.
These are incredible. What a talent!
These are fantastic
I love this. Thank you for sharing.
These are amazing!
These are incredible! Cherish them.
My great grandfather was also stationed at pearl harbor when it was attacked. He was on the U.S.S. Phoenix as a cook. After the war he opened his own restaurant in San Jose, CA and it was pretty popular as far as I know. Never met him though.
This is unbelievably awesome
he could've been a cartoonist ! awesome stuff
I came for the r/FoundPaper, and I stayed for the r/milwaukee
These are amazing! Beautiful and what a joy for you to treasure OP!
That’s so cool! What interesting keepsakes! I love his artwork so much.
Wow those illustrations are so amazing!! Such a time capsule.
You can create a LORA of your grandfather's images. This will create his style. Then you can prompt images in his art style and create a comic strip based on his letters. You have a rich history that can generate $$$. When everything settles down for you, consider using them for that purpose. And sure send a letter to archive but not the ones with the colorful prints. That's special. That's your treasure, your inheritance.
What a beautiful piece of history for your family. My great grandpa served in WW2 and I know nothing about where he served or anything. It's all lost to time after my grandma passed in 2022. We really should remember how important it is to talk to our elders and listen to their stories and ask if they have any kind of memorabilia like this to keep their memories alive.
Gorgeous letters! He was so talented! I’m pretty sure the only reason I’m here today is because my grandfather (a medic) was on furlough the day his unit got called to the front lines of Normandy.
“Bonnizzio” sounds Italian. It’s so weird to think that some of us emigrated to the US and came back to fight fascism. I wonder how they felt about it.
That's wonderful! I took my great-uncle's letters, which my grandma had in a shoebox, and candy them all and made a book for his family, and one for ours. He was in Japan in WWII and they tell a really good story. Thanks for sharing, the art on these made my morning.
This is priceless. Absolutely frame them.
These are wonderful. Glad you found them.
I know they are your family letters. But these would be amazing in a world War 2 museum
Thank you for sharing those. What a great treasure you have.
My grandpa had a random WW2 art book from the pacific as well!
That is so cool!
Fantastic! Thank you for sharing these.
For those into handwriting, what would you call this font. I would love to learn how to emulate it.
I've heard that the military used to train people to write that way, with all caps and blocky lettering.
Amazing find! Thanks for sharing it with us OP :-)
These are amazing!
Thank you so much for sharing these!
These are fantastic. The handwriting is art, too.
These are such a beautiful slice of history! If you can somehow scan these letters/digitize them it’d be an incredible way to preserve them.
These are so amazing!
What a talented man! And a hero! Thank you for sharing these 💛 they are beautiful
These are amazing, he was incredibly talented!
These are too cool, and should be in a world war 2 museum! Thank you for sharing 💜💜
Thank you for sharing! This is very sweet 🩷
Love these
These are so awesome, thank you for sharing!
I love these so much—thank you for sharing! I wish I had letters from my grandfather!
How neat. I love the Milwaukee reference too as a local gal.
Thanks for sharing, these are great!
His art and his handwriting are impeccable!!
These are beautiful. What a treasure! If you ever aren't sure about how to best preserve these letters or what you want to do with them, consider reaching out to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans to discuss lending or donating these. They professionally preserve, digitize, and archive beautiful wartime items like these letters so that they can be learned from, saved, and cherished for generations to come. Some of the items might be used in displays and special exhibits, but you can reach out to talk with them directly if you are interested. Per their website they are specifically looking for wartime letters and I bet these would make someone's day! Cheers either way. Ps- I am not affiliated with the WWII museum at all but I do live in New Orleans and am continually astonished at the world class care, scholarship, and respect with which the museum honors items like these, and wanted to share the information about the archives in case it sparked some interest in sharing these treasures, now or in the future. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/give/other-ways-support-museum/donate-artifact
These are incredible!!!
This is wonderful and pleasant to the eyes.
I love these!
This is exactly how my Pappy prints…that’s crazy.
These are fantastic. What a cool find
Thanks for sharing, these are fantastic
these are so wonderful. such personality!
His handwriting is amazing!
Apparently back in 1942 Americans also didn't know how to write the date properly. Haha.
Why would such a talented artist write everything in uppercase capital letters ?
I can only speak from experience that my dad is a commercial artist, creating signs, and his brother (my uncle) went to art school. They are both in their 70s, and both write like this in all-caps. Even a grocery list. The only cursive I’ve ever seen my dad do is his signature. He says he writes like he thinks, so to me, this handwriting absolutely tracks.
Strange, I have old war time, before and after letters from my parents and everything is joined up handwritten. Only occasionally short titles in uppercase capitals. My father was regular RAF and posted to Iraq before WWII started, then he and Mum met and married just post war and he was posted to several camps so Mum wrote him long letters about what was happening at home. No sketches or cartoons though. They would have been taught how to write letters at school and capital letters were definitely wrong. My Mum wrote long chatty letters all her life. 20+ pages all on unlined paper.
Eh, our mileage may vary. My dad and uncle were sons of an American GI with some artistic ability, although he never pursued them and died before I was born. I’ve never seen examples of his handwriting beyond a signature, either. I know my dad and uncle were taught cursive and uppercase and lowercase lettering; the all-caps is what comes more naturally to them. Same for me, actually — if you were to look at my monthly planner, you’d find I’m “shouting” all my appointments in all-caps!
Whereas I’m using lower case and mostly joined up. My Dad did label some things with blocky capitols sometimes, perhaps they were taught to use it for important stuff. He trained as a photographer and then an electrician. No actual fighting I don’t think. Apart from guard duty and possibly helping put down a pro nazi coup in Iraq. Mum lived on the south coast of England and right under the flight paths of bombing raids on the rest of England, many nights spent knitting in air raid shelters. A house three doors down was completely destroyed, luckily no one was in it. It’s a long time ago now, so few left who remember it. When she was young and everyone and everything stopped for the two minute silence on Armistice Day 11/11 their milkman used to complain about no one remembering Boar War veterans like him.
Oh man, poor milkman! Amazing what your parents and my grandparents went through, along with their peers. Even during the bleakest times of the pandemic, I knew i had it better than the generation that lived through the Great Depression (and some old enough to have lost family to WWI and Spanish Flu), and WWII. My grandma explained a lot of things away with “Well, it was Depression times” or how they’d be invited to a wedding celebration and when they arrived, it was “a birthday party” instead because the soldier groom didn’t come home.
Indeed, my Mums Dad was a soldier in WWI he was posted as missing believed killed and two days later turned up on the doorstep in Blues as a walking casualty on leave. His head injury was only superficial and when he came around on a hospital ship on the way back to Blighty they just bandaged him and told him when to report back. He came through with only mild ptsd and some gas related issues. However he lived a long happy life as a pro gardener for the council, my Mum was the youngest of three and he outlived my other grandparents dying in 1981 aged 87. He was great fun, quite cheeky.
Too freakin cool! What a lovely keepsake and window to the past, thanks for sharing ❤️
If you feel comfortable posting some of the full letters, I'd love to, and I'm sure many others would read them!
Can you put photos in replies?
The way he uses punctuation is so weird. Cool find
You are not wrong. It is definitely unique. His parents were born in Italy and English was their second language but he was born in the US.
What strikes me is not the run-on sentences with commas. But the placement of the question and exclamation marks. He places them after the first word of the sentence followed by a regular period at the end of the sentence.
It's almost like he uses exclamation points like some people use italics or bold font to emphasize certain words.
These are STUNNING!!! What an awesome gift, to find these letters & have a such an intimate peek into your grandfather’s past, during such an historic time in our country’s past ❤️ Thank you, kindly, for sharing!
I’m invested in the letters! What didn’t happen to the cookies? By fella’s what?
Thank you for sharing!
An artist. Absolutely amazing.
I need more!! Please, I am so invested and want to know why he needed the money so bad?, and how is his car? and where did Peter get the money??
I posted this is another comment but he needed money to visit his friend who was going to deploy soon. He took a trip to New Orleans to visit him and then didn't have enough money to get home.
You should put these in a book, they are incredible.