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Personal notes of love will be cherished this Valentine’s Day

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By Meredith Moss, Staff Writer Updated 2:33 PM Monday, January 23, 2012

SPRINGBORO — If Don Quigley has anything to say about it, we’ll all be writing love letters this Valentine’s Day.

“The value of a letter is that you get a feeling just by looking at it,” insists the Springboro man, who has recently penned a memoir inspired by letters he’s saved over the years. He’ll talk about the new book — “Letters from Otto” — at the Dayton Mall Borders Bookstore on Saturday, Feb. 13.

“A letter gives you a portable documentation of somebody’s true character, you can see the emotions in it,” says Quigley. Retired from IBM, he now teaches information technology as an adjunct professor at the University of Dayton.

His writing career got its start when he uncovered that cherished batch of letters — some tied neatly together with grocery string, others with a rubber band. He had taken them with him through a number of moves but rarely looked at them.

“They were from my best friend all through grammar school and high school in Spencerport, New York,” explains Quigley, now 68. “When I took his letters out of the box, I also found 30 letters from a girl I had dated when she was 16 and I was 17.”

Those letters — and a creative writing class at UD’s Lifelong Learning Institute — stirred memories that led to Quigley’s self-published memoir. The first signed copy, and the original letters, went to his lifelong friend, Otto.

On the weekend of their 50th high school reunion, the two friends appeared together for a book signing, not so far from where they’d experienced many of the adventures captured in the book.

Meanwhile, Quigley, who is working on a second book, can’t stop writing letters. He wrote letters to each of his grandchildren this year as a Christmas gift and plans to write to each of them again on their birthdays. He and his wife, Patti, have also written letters to one another that are sealed and have been placed in a safe, to be opened only after their deaths.

Quigley, who has five children and eight grandchildren, has become a letter advocate, encouraging others to express appreciation and love through personal notes. Not only will they be treasured immediately, he believes, but they are an important record of the times, worthy of being passed along through the generations.

“Reading letters and other handwritten documents from the past provides a unique insight into the soul of the person who wrote them,” writes Quigley in the introduction to his book. “My great-grandparents wrote letters to one another that documented their struggle in pursuing a relationship. It was long distance even though they lives 12 miles from each other.”

Quigley insists anyone can write a letter and that e-mails just can’t compare.

“Just sit down, pick up a paper and pen and write about what you are doing, kinda like a journal,” he says. “Some people don’t even know they are poets or writers until they actually sit down and write something. You can say things in a letter that you don’t feel comfortable saying face-to-face to the other person. Everybody has things they think about — this is a way to express it.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2440 or MMoss@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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