Dear Mr. President...

Dear Mr. President...

Presidential letters... Past and Present!

Have you ever written a letter to the President of the United States of America??  Do schools still do this?  Since I have been homeschooling for the past 24 years...I wouldn't know.  But when I was 10 years old and living with my family on an army base in Japan, I decided to write a letter to the President who happened to be none other than President Nixon!  I was SURE he read my letter, and was thrilled to receive a large brown 11X13 envelope from the White House --to me , proof that President Nixon HAD read my letter.  I have no idea what my letter contained, but I vaguely remember that I mentioned that my father was working for him (civil service).  It contained  a very nice letter from Rosemary Woods (remember the missing minutes on the tapes? ;-0 ) Nixon's  personal secretary, and a paperback biography of Nixon.  I was so proud of this package and the personal letter from HIS personal secretary assuring me that  it was ONLY his  official duties that prevented him from personally responding to my letter!

This is how I preserved my letter from President Nixon.

My dad gave me the black paper and a clear plastic cover.  Notice the yellowing of the scotch tape.  I guess I'm really getting old!!!

Anyway, I don't know exactly how this all surfaced after so many years (I had nearly  forgotten that I had even written the letter), but my 10 year old daughter  was so thrilled with this concept of writing the most important man in America,  with the  high probability of getting a letter back, that she immediately got to writing...

Please do not judge harshly...she did this in a hurry...her spelling is atrocious,  she put a million smiley faces, she jumped from one subject to another...to another...OK.  It is a VERY rough draft! But what really struck me was that she wrote all about her little world...she is about to be an auntie again...X3 (and all three are boys!),  what church she attends, who her best friend is, what book she is currently reading, the fact that she has to go to bed now because she has school tomorrow... and on and on.  There is a very touching part...,"we are praying for you (and our church) to make right decisions.  I do not want to be president,  there are too many choices.  I do not know how you do it..."

She ends her letter with, ..."do you like rainbows?  I love them!  I wish  I had one or I could make a wand that could make them.  Say Hi to your dog for me..."

Ruthann

P.S.  please write back!

We will work on this to be a proper letter, but I just loved her innocence  and freshness of writing about her life, like she was writing  a relative.  It is a sweet letter.  I hope she gets a response.

I did a bit of research and found that there is an entire agency that deals with all the mail the president receives.  Of course they screen for threats and complaints. Then, some kind of response is generated. Did you know that the president is handed a sample of about 10 letters, or emails a day to read?   Wouldn't it be cool if hers was read?  

Write Letters...write often,

Lady Pamela