GAIL WHITE Pen pals share a letter-perfect friendship

When Betty Jo Cartier of Struthers was 13 years old, a class project at school started her on a writing journey that has lasted more than half a century.
"We were given pen pals," Betty Jo explains. "I was given the name Norma Crothers of Moss Vale, Australia."
Betty Jo wrote her first letter to Norma in 1940.
"I received my first letter from Norma in April 1940," Betty Jo says, after consulting her notebook which has the events recorded.
For years, the two girls who grew to become women wrote back and forth across the ocean.
"I liked writing," Betty Jo says. "We just kind of clicked."
The women exchanged birthday cards and small gifts.
"She would send me handkerchiefs," Betty Jo explains, holding up a checkered handkerchief she has kept neatly folded.
"Once she sent me the music for Waltzing Matilda. She knew I played the piano," Betty Jo says.
Through the years, the women exchanged pictures.
Betty Jo holds up a black and white photograph of a beautiful young woman with long, curled hair and a shining smile.
Another photo reveals a young man, holding hands with Norma. Still another shows that same young man, Jim, and Norma on their wedding day.
"When we were younger we wrote more often," Betty Jo explains. "As we got older, just once or twice a year."
Betty Jo kept every letter.
Sad news
In 1974, Norma invited Betty Jo to the wedding of her daughter, Kerry.
Betty Jo couldn't cross the ocean to attend, but extended the same invitation to Norma the following year when her daughter married.
Norma was not able to attend either. It turned out, that was the last opportunity for the two longtime pen pals to meet.
In October of 1976, Norma died of cancer.
"I have to send you some very sad news," Kerry wrote to Betty Jo. "Mum passed away ..."
Betty Jo sent her condolences, and after 36 years, her overseas letter writing stopped.
"My husband became ill with Multiple Sclerosis, my mother came to live with us, my son died," Betty Jo recounts the years after 1976. "I didn't think a whole lot about it."
New pen pal
In 1991, Betty Jo came across the letters she had saved for so many years. She wrote to Kerry.
"You can't imagine how thrilled I am to have received your letter today," Kerry wrote in return. "We moved in 1979 but I continue to keep in touch with our neighbors and it was them that forwarded your letter to me."
Betty Jo began corresponding with Norma's daughter and learned that Kerry had two children with the same names as Betty Jo's children.
"She didn't know," Betty Jo says of the coincidence. "She didn't know anything about me really."
Betty Jo sent Kerry all of the letters that her mother had written to her American friend.
"I have shed quite a few tears, laughed and smiled and have been delighted with the discoveries I have made," Kerry wrote upon receiving her mother's letters. "I was 23 when Mum died. There were so many things I didn't know about her."
"As I read through Mum's letters to you," Kerry continues, "I see Mum more through adult eyes -- something I would never have been able to experience had you not so generously sent the letters to me."
Kerry and Betty Jo have corresponded for more than 10 years.
In September, Betty Jo took a long-awaited trip overseas to meet the family of her beloved pen pal.
Two large albums are full of pictures from her monthlong visit.
Yet, somehow, the photos do not express the bond words created, written between two young women and shared with a daughter who never had the opportunity to see her mother with "adult eyes."
gwhite@vindy.com