Blast From the Past Project Update: David A., 1963
Our “Blast from the Past” project is well underway, slowly but surely! We’re making our way through a box of 2,000+ letters written to Jerry West from 1954-1974, trying to find current addresses for the writers and return their original letters to them.
We’re up to the file marked “1963” now. It’s not always easy to locate these folks; most people don’t still live in their childhood homes, and many names have changed due to marriage. Most of the “children” who wrote these letters were about 10 years old at the time, putting them in their early seventies now. We’ve noticed that a high percentage of them grew up to become teachers, librarians, and writers—an interesting trend, but not all that surprising, for people who were avid readers as children!
David A. of Bethel, Connecticut, was one of the children who wrote to Jerry West in 1963.
We reached David this summer, now living in Meriden, Connecticut, and he replied with a joyous email recounting his memories of writing the letter. His parents had encouraged him to write to the author—the only person who could answer David’s questions about the Hollister family—and he spent his half of his hard-earned allowance to pay the postage himself. (A stamp cost 5¢ in 1963. We’re betting not many kids today would be satisfied with a weekly allowance of 10¢!)
At David’s persistence, his local library eventually acquired all 33 volumes in The Happy Hollisters series. Once he finished reading them, he moved on to Tom Swift, Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew, and he slowly began collecting copies for his personal library.
David retired in 2018 after more than 40 years as a classroom teacher (elementary, middle, and high-school levels) and as a library media specialist. Over the years, he was able to introduce many of his students to The Happy Hollisters by reading excerpts from his prized copies, which he sometimes gifted to particularly engaged students.
His students were “amazed at all the differences they noted and recognized when compared to the usual stories they have read today. They noted the simpler times, the more basic lifestyles, the straightforward stories and simpler story lines, straightforward plots and the lack of diversity, not to mention the lack of any mention of violence, war, social issues, computers, cell phones, color TV, toys mentioned, kids’ freedom to go off on their own without parents, etc.”
Through what must have been spirited classroom discussions, David tried to convince his students that his childhood was not as boring as they thought it must have been. Devoid of the internet, color television, cell phones, video games, David enjoyed the freedom and security of “growing up in the country in a small town where cars were never locked, crime was minimal, you knew every adult and child by first name, kids went off each morning in the summer and weren’t expected to check in at home until dinnertime, and almost all of our activities, even in the winter, were outside with no parent supervision . . .” The Happy Hollisters provided a window into the past for David’s millennial students who only rarely saw brief glimpses of 1950s and 1960s lifestyles in old movies or vintage television shows.
David closed his email to us with the charming observation of “how great the reach of the internet is and how it so easily allows the past to touch the present.” That has definitely been our experience with our “Blast from the Past” project, knowing that as we are using the internet to track down these former fans, we’re closing the gap between the past and the present, and it is truly swell!