Milton Keene

Reclamations Milton Keene

This is a touching story of two people who returned home from their service in WWII, fell in love with each other at first sight, and then communicated by writing the most intimate love letters during their long-distance courtship. After they married and started a family, the heartrending letters between them continued while enduring a separation necessary to reaching their goals for a better life. After the author's mother passed, he and his family found hidden love letters-letters written between his parents about returning from service in WWII, finding each other and falling in love, and then trying to establish a family during hard economic times. Not only did these extremely personal letters describe their parent's heated love for each other, but they also shed light on their struggles to reclaim their lives. A struggle also experienced by many other veterans returning home to a new American economy. An economy driven by the latest industries created during the war. These new companies needed mechanically inclined blu-collar workers to operate the machinery. Most of their workforce needed to migrated from the rural farms and inner cities to partake in a modern lifestyle in newly built communities earned from jobs offering better incomes, health benefits for the family, and investment opportunities. But it wasn't an easy task. Learning to take orders from industry bosses, developing new skills to run unfamiliar machines and equipment with tedious, routine precision, and trying to fit into communities that they needed moving to for those coveted jobs was a challenge for them. This is their story, and it needs telling!