For Valentine’s Day, we bring you a love letter. Peter M. Page joined the US Naval Air Corps after graduating with Princeton University’s Class of 1941. The following letter is part of the correspondence between Page and his fiancée Ann Pearman (nee Aiguier) during his training and military service. (The Peter M. Page papers are housed at the Mudd Manuscript Library on the campus of Princeton University. Click here for more about Page.)
Transcript below images:
I had the most marvelous conversation over the telephone this evening I ever had in my life, with the most marvelous creation in the history of the world — you’ll never know how I felt this afternoon from the second I read that letter until I finally go you on the phone — as soon as I read it there was only one thing left for me to do and that was to call you as soon as possible and find out just what was the story, the trouble, the situation — if you ever doubted in all your life whether I love your or not today should have proven to you just exactly how terribly much you do mean to me – if I’d had to go thru this entire night without knowing the answer, without knowing whether you loved me, it would have been too much. I’ve proven just how weak I am, that I couldn’t live without you — you mean so much to me that it terrifies me to think what would happen if you left —– I was going to stay in town tonight and have a few drinks with the boys but after talking to you, everything else lost all interest for me and after a nice big steak dinner I came back here to the barracks where I could write you for the third time today. All I can think of is you, my dear-heart; you’re in my heart twenty-four hours a day and facing the next four months without seeing you is the blackest outlook possible — how can I live four months without my "better-half" — its like living without my heart.