Love letters between WWII soldier, future wife found in Nashville home: "Something very important to tell you"

Highlights from a trove of more than 200 love letters that tell the story of a couple's courtship and marriage during World War II are now on display digitally through the Nashville Public Library, offering an intimate picture of love during wartime. In:

Highlights from a trove of more than 200 love letters that tell the story of a couple's courtship and marriage during World War II are now on display digitally through the Nashville Public Library, offering an intimate picture of love during wartime.

The letters by William Raymond Whittaker and Jane Dean were found in a Nashville home that had belonged to Jane and her siblings. They were donated in 2016 to the Metro Nashville Archives. Sarah Arntz with Metro Archives told CBS affilaite WTVF the letters were found near a fireplace at a home close to what is now Music Row. 

Whittaker, who went by Ray, was from New Rochelle, New York. He moved to the Tennessee capital to attend the historically Black Meharry Medical College, according to the library's metropolitan archivist, Kelley Sirko. That's where he met and dated Jane, another student at the college.

The pair lost touch when Ray left Nashville. In the summer of 1942 he was drafted into the Army. Stationed at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, he decided to reestablish contact with Jane, who was then working as a medical lab technician at Vanderbilt University

The library doesn't have Ray's first letter to Jane, but it does have her reply. She greets him somewhat formally as "Dear Wm R."