Soldier's letters prompt search for answers

SANDPOINT - If your walls could talk, what would they say?

That question was recently answered for a Sandpoint man when he discovered a number of 64-year-old love letters buried in the wall of his garage.

Sandpoint post office employee Johnnie Lawson was renovating his garage when he uncovered the brown, decaying letters covered in more than a half-century of dirt and detritus.  

"We were doing some work installing a door in the garage and we had to rip open the end wall. When we ripped it open, the letters just fell out. They were inside the wall," Lawson said.

The letters, which were sent between March and April 1944, were written by a man named Erwin Graves, who was stationed at the Farragut Naval Station in Bayview, to his wife, Lucy Graves.

His curiosity piqued, Lawson brushed the dirt from the letters and began to read.

Beginning with a salutation of "My dearest sweetheart," the letters offer a glimpse into the daily life of a man on the verge of war.

Sometimes irreverent, sometimes touching, and sometimes a bit of both, the letters address everything from the couple's finances to the living quarters at the naval station.

In a letter dated March 29, 1944, Graves encourages his wife to get a part-time job, but his trepidation is evident.

"I would like to see you work so the time would go faster, but I hate to see you out among the wolves, and there are a lot of them in here. A fellow hears lots of things that they have done and how easy the women are, so please honey don't be that kind, but I know my sweetheart won't," Graves said.

Lawson had no idea who the couple was or how their letters became part of his garage, but he was interested enough to find out more.

For fun, he began asking older relatives and friends about the Graves. To his surprise, a few of  them vaguely remembered the young couple living just down the street from Lawson's house during the 1940s.

Lawson thought the letters had the makings of an interesting love story and, like reading the first chapter of a good book, he wanted to know how the story ended. Were they still alive? Did Erwin go to war? At the very least, he wanted to find a relative to give the letters to.

With the help of staff workers from the Bonner County Historical Museum and the county clerk's office, details about the couple began to materialize. Through an exhaustive search of local wedding certificates, it was discovered that Erwin Judine Graves had married Lucy Queen on Oct. 31, 1936, when he was 27 and she was 17.

The marriage certificate was a start, but information on the duo was scant. The phone book is filled with residents with the Graves surname, but none were related to Erwin and Lucy.

After several dead ends, a member of the Graves family finally surfaced. Karen Brown, whose father Harold was Erwin's brother, has little memory of her aunt and uncle, but the information she did have shattered the fairy tale story that those involved had hoped for.

Instead of living happily ever after, Brown said Erwin and Lucy were divorced shortly after the war. Lucy took the Graves' only child, Erwin Jr., and moved out of the area. Erwin left as well, although Brown isn't sure what happened to him afterwards.

While it was not the ending he had hoped for, Lawson said he is glad to get the information that he did. He will most likely never find out how or why the letters ended up in his wall, but at least he'll have an interesting story to tell.