By FRED KRONER
fred@mahometnews.com
This is a story about an 11-year-old girl corresponding with a 19-year-old man.
What it’s not is a creepy tale about two people who meet over the Internet and the horrors that follow.
This is a feel-good story that began in the fall of 1969 when the 11-year-old girl was a fifth-grader at Mahomet’s Lincoln Trail Elementary School and her teacher, Ellen Tranquilli, gave the students an in-class assignment.
They were to write a letter to a soldier.
The student was Letitia (Opolka) Cundiff.
The soldier was to be determined.
She didn’t even have the name of the person to whom she was writing. She remembers addressing the letter along the lines of “To A Soldier.”
There was a reason for not sending the letter to a specific individual.
“They gave it to a soldier who didn’t have mail,” Cundiff said. “It was something classes did back then as a way to reach out and say thank you.”
She got no response from her initial letter.
Even in her pre-teen years, Cundiff showed her spunk and tenacity. She didn’t let one unanswered letter deter her from having an overseas pen pal.
She wrote a second letter, working on it at home and asking her parents to mail it.
She remembers her blunt beginning.
“I said, ‘I’m in fifth-grade and my teacher is making us write a letter to a soldier,’ ” Cundiff recalled.
From there, her letter was pretty generic.
“I told him what I was doing in school and that I was active in Church,” Cundiff said.
***
Canton native Charles Robert Taylor – who goes by Bob – was a Sergeant in the Army and served in Vietnam for 10 ½ months. He was discharged in January, 1970.
He remembers a number of letters arriving for servicemen from school children.
The unopened letters were put in a container.
“I drew her (letter) out,” Taylor said.
He was 19 years old at the time.
“Everybody was required to write to a child in grade school,” Taylor said.
His letter was sent to Letitia.
Receiving mail from a serviceman was a highlight for the young girl.
“I was honored and thrilled as an 11-year-old girl to have received a response to my letter, regardless of how that response came about,” Cundiff said. “I do remember in his first letter to me that he said it was strange to be 19 writing to an 11-year-old, but that’s about all I can recall after 49 years.
“I got two letters from him while he was there,” Cundiff added.
***
For many, the beginning of the story might also be the end.
Two letters written and sent. Mission accomplished. Let’s go play.
“A lifelong friendship came about during a very difficult time in U.S. history,” Cundiff said. “We could have exchanged a letter or two and gone our separate ways, but I truly believe that our paths were meant to cross and God had a reason for bringing us together and keeping our friendship strong.”
Cundiff regularly maintained contact her veteran friend, who received a Bronze Star.
“I had in my mind to stay in touch,” she said.
Bob Taylor returned to Illinois and relocated to Decatur, where his mother was living. In 1973, he got married.
That relationship led to a type of communication Cundiff never would have imagined.
“When he got married, his wife (Suellen) took over corresponding with me.” Cundiff said.
Cundiff was a little nervous as she started reading the first letter from Suellen.
“She said, ‘I’m Bob’s wife and I know about you,’ “ Cundiff recalled.
It was the first step in advancing a friendship between two people into a friendship between two families.
“I’d see them twice a year. I was there for their kids’ births and marriages,” Cundiff said.
“They’ve been there for my kids, my marriage, my divorce.
“Now I spend most of my time (with the family) with her. We talk on Facebook a lot.”
Suellen Taylor had no qualms about her husband being in contact with a female who was originally a pen pal.
“It didn’t bother me at all,” she said. “I thought it was wonderful.
“The friendship took off and when there’s anything special, nine out of 10 times, she comes. She’s a great friend.”
Cundiff, a 1977 Mahomet-Seymour graduate whose children are also M-S alums (and whose grandson is a first-grader at Middletown Prairie), remembers the first meeting. She saw the two Taylors together.
“I was working at DQ,” she said. “It was before I could drive.
“He came in and said, ‘Are you Letitia?’ I broke down and started crying. It was a surprise.”
Turns out it was only a surprise for the teen-ager. The Taylors were camping at the Sportsmen’s Club, on Lake of the Woods Road, and had reached out to the Opolka family for permission to introduce themselves and visit with their daughter.
“We had been corresponding back and forth,” Bob Taylor said. “My wife and I decided to look her up.
“We met each other and everything was great. We had a good time.”
***
Taylor’s letters rarely talked about Vietnam.
“I told him once, without Vietnam, we wouldn’t be here,” Cundiff said. “That brought something good to my life.
“It makes my heart swell to have met someone when I was 11, and not have a clue who he was, and to have maintained the friendship and have the relationship I do with his family.”
They don’t just talk about being friends. They demonstrate what it means.
“Two years ago, I got a call from one of his daughters and she said, ‘Mom is in the hospital,’ “ Cundiff said. “I dropped everything and took off and went to Decatur for the day.”
When Cundiff was having marital troubles and split with her husband in 2015, she said, “I was devastated.”
Her Decatur friends helped her to cope.
“Bob and Suellen were there the day we said “I do” and they were there for me when my world crumbled beneath me,” Cundiff said. “We’ve been there for the good times and the bad.”
The Taylors invited her to spend time with them.
“I went camping with them,” she said. “They kept me busy and my mind occupied.
“They are a very warm and open family. I’ve always felt welcomed with them, whether my visit is announced or unannounced.”
Keeping the bond strong for decades, Cundiff said, “came naturally,” though she added, “just as in any relationship, it takes work as well, on everyone’s part.
“I’m lucky that his wife, Suellen, picked up and kept the correspondence going through the years. She has been as close a friend to me as Bob has.”
***
Forty nine years after Cundiff wrote the first letter to an unknown soldier, she and her serviceman friend still visit several times a year.
The Taylors attended Cundiff’s 50th birthday bash.
Taylor, a retired sheet metal worker, and his wife had three daughters: Angela, Janice and Jamie.
Cundiff swears it is just a coincidence that her oldest child has a first and middle name that sounds similar to one of the Taylor clan. Jaime Lynne is the name of Cundiff’s first-born.
One of the Taylors’ three daughters, who is a few years older, is Jamie Lynn.
“She spells hers wrong,” Suellen Taylor joked.
Cundiff explained: “It wasn’t planned and really didn’t cross my mind. Their dad wanted their initials to be ‘J.L.’ “
Cundiff’s son is named Jeremy Lane.
The children of the two families have also associated with each other.
“Their Jamie came and stayed with us and my son drove them around,” Cundiff said. “They’ve all accepted each other. My kids thought it was cool.
“I am blessed to have the whole family in my life. I’ve always felt comfortable telling them anything. It’s an easy family to be around.”
***
There is one additional twist to the decades-old story.
Cundiff doesn’t keep in touch regularly with many of her teachers, though she’s Facebook friends with Mike Tilford, her former history and social studies instructor at M-S High School.
And then, there’s the teacher that she sends a Christmas card and updates to every December.
That teacher is Ellen Tranquilli, her fifth-grade teacher who lives in Mount Vernon.
“We have that bond,” Cundiff said. “I think she enjoys hearing that her project brought about a lifelong friendship.”
That relationship, at times, takes some explaining.
When Bob Taylor’s mother passed away in February, Cundiff was one of the mourners.
Introductions were made to others who were in attendance.
“They called me ‘Letitia, Bob’s pen pal,’ ” Cundiff said. “I had to explain what a pen pal was.”
She doesn’t need to explain what she does before Veteran’s Day every November, out of respect to Taylor and others who have served the country.
“I send out Military Appreciation Cards,” Cundiff said. “I sent out 65 last year.”
The story shared by Cundiff and Taylor is a heartwarming one, so different from many of the reports that are in the national media on a regular basis.
“I think it’s a wonderful story in a world where people only seem to dwell on the negative,” Cundiff said. “Good things do happen and, in my case, can last a lifetime.
“I believe that our families will remain close even when the day comes that one or both of us is no longer walking the earth. It has been a joy and an honor to be a part of Bob’s life in every way.”
