A Fathers’ Letters: Connecting Past to Present
After the initial euphoria, one of the potholes along the road as we transition from work to retirement may be the need to discover a new purpose to fill the sudden void. Helpful ideas may be buried in a closet, an attic, or wherever else you store your personal artifacts.
This book shows how re-evaluating a father’s writings to his family eventually illuminated his son’s life trajectory.
A Father’s Letters serves a as a reminder to the unique qualities of personal correspondence, and how it can offer new insights into our own lives – past, present, and future.
When visiting the World War II military museum outside of Colmar, France in June of 2025 (eighty years after his father fought in the Colmar Pocket), Murray shared copies of his book with the museum’s curators.
The curators encouraged him to submit a virtual entry to their collection.
The result is shown here.
Workshops at DeKalb History Center
Murray along with Tamika Strong, the Manager of the Reference and Research Division at the Auburn Avenue Research Library in Atlanta, have facilitated two workshops in 2025 on preserving family and community histories.
For details, visit Workshops.
Where to Buy A Father’s Letters
Visit this page for all the different ways you can purchase this book.
A Father’s Letters at the WWII Museum
On November 18, 2025, I visited the World War II Museum in New Orleans to drop off some supporting materials for A Father’s Letters. The museum accepted a copy of the book for their research library and a second book for their donor file which includes several of my father’s letters from the Colmar pocket region of France that he wrote from December 1944 through the summer of 1945
Assistant Curator Brandon Daake (left) and Associate Curator Chase Tomlin (right) receive the book and support materials from Murray.
For more details on the handoff and the experience see this blog posting from December 3, 2025.
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