Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 30, 1993 TAG: 9305270165
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KENNETH SINGLETARY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
He was an ensign with the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific; she was living and working in Richmond. Married in 1937, they had little more to sustain their relationship than their memories, Jack's two brief visits home late in the war - and their letters.
They wrote prolifically, often several times a week. And because each letter was a treasure, more tangible and evocative than a tinny-sounding phone call, Jane and Jack saved them all.
Two weeks ago, after six years of research, writing and editing, the letters were published by the University of Virginia Press as "A Better Legend."
Poulton took the title of her book from the saying that lovers make better legends than heroes do. And, indeed, the book is in part a love story, one that shows that the bond between two people need not be weakened by time apart and distance.
"Many marriages were wrecked [by the war], but in our case we came to a better understanding of ourselves and our marriage," she writes in the preface.
Jack Poulton had been a member of the 27th Seabee battalion that built bridges, roads and hospitals in places such as Guadalcanal and Okinawa. He often found himself in foxholes, ducking bombs and kamikazes.
He had earned a bachelor of science degree in structural engineering in 1932 and a master's degree in 1933 from Virginia Tech. After the war, he and Jane Poulton returned to Blacksburg, where he was to become head of the university's architectural engineering division.
They lived in Blacksburg and on a farm on Prices Fork Road for 30 years, raising a family and dogs and horses. Jack Poulton became assistant dean of architecture. Jane Poulton became a free-lance writer and wrote a column for a local newspaper. She also worked with children with reading disabilities and helped start the Montgomery County Humane Society.
In 1976 they moved to Durham, N.C., to be near their son and so Jack Poulton could receive careful medical attention. He died 11 years later.
Not long after that, Jane Poulton was cleaning out her husband's sea chest from his war years. There on the bottom was their wartime correspondence - hundreds of letters - he had saved.
Jane Poulton, who had taught rural sociology at Tech for seven years after the war, was already editing letters written by Jack's paternal grandparents. They had been living in Leesburg in the 1850s; their letters portrayed their romance and everyday life in Virginia before the Civil War. Suddenly, though, Poulton saw a more personal project that demanded her attention.
For six years, she worked on the letters, editing them, researching the war and contacting people in Jack's unit.
"The letters reveal Jane Poulton's quiet evolution from protected housewife to independent working woman and civil rights activist. Jack's letters show his increasing confidence as an engineer and give his thoughtful observations of the war," the book's dust jacket reads.
"They just seemed to be more grown up dealing with hardships than young people are today," said Gerald Trett, an acquisitions editor at UVa's press who remembers the war years and who worked closely with Poulton.
"I thought that was one of the more valuable assets of the book, in that it shows how much our culture has changed."
Trett recommended strongly that UVa print the letters, and that press was the only publisher to which Poulton sent her manuscript.
In the fall of 1942, Jack was training in Norfolk, but was due to leave soon for more preparation in other parts of the country, then for assignment overseas. Jane Poulton took a bus from Richmond for a short pre-embarkation visit. It would be the last time they would see each other for two years.
From Jack in Gulfport, Miss., Oct. 25:
"I didn't know until I got off your bus Friday morning, how hard leaving you was going to be. I felt so alone and away from my whole life, and I wanted to run after you and tell you how much I shall miss you but I guess you know that. I shall never forget watching your bus leave and knowing that I would have to be without you for a while."
From Jane Poulton in Richmond, where she was working as a secretary to the dean of Richmond Professional Institute, now Virginia Commonwealth University, Oct. 29:
"My morale was very low the first part of the week but picking up now. I am glad you couldn't run after the bus because I wanted to weep as it was when I got that last glimpse of your face through the window. I will have to get over this emptiness and lost feeling with lots of hard work. At least I don't have to weep for anything I have missed along the way. I can stand being without you if the world still contains you somewhere. So be careful. Don't go near wounded Japanese. They have a nasty habit of carrying concealed weapons and stabbing Marines who try to be helpful. Also beware of snake bites and mosquitoes and write often."
Writing runs in Jane Poulton's family. Her brother, William Weaver, is a noted musicologist, Italian translator of Umberto Eco and National Book Award winner. A second brother, John, is a novelist, biographer and short-story writer; and her father was court reporter for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Still, serendipity played a role in producing "A Better Legend," she said during a recent book signing at Books, Strings & Things in Blacksburg.
Jack Poulton's sea chest had contained virtually all their correspondence, but one important letter was missing - a letter he swore he would always keep. It was the one Jane wrote just before the war ended to tell him she was pregnant with their first child.
"One night when I was working at the computer, I leaned back in my chair to rest, looked over to a bureau that contained some of his things, and something urged me to take one more look in a drawer I had searched several times. My hand went down to the bottom and felt a leather folder which contained my picture. Before my fingers slipped behind the photograph, I knew I had found the missing letter," she writes in her preface.
From Jane Poulton, May 2, 1945:
"Listen here, You! This is no time for you to be running around after Red Cross girls under tropical moons. You may be going to be a father and you had better behave. I wasn't going to tell you until I was sure but things look pretty good."
Poulton became somewhat of an expert on the war in the South Pacific while she was compiling the book. She did a lot of reading and talking, but then she had to get down to business - she had to edit the letters.
"I had to be ruthless," she said. "Cutting is so difficult."
She spent two to three hours a day typing the 500 hundred letters into a computer. She wrote letters to people in Jack's unit, and she talked with many of them.
"They had been waiting around for 40 years for someone to listen to their war stories," she said. "I don't know what their phone bills were when they called me, but they talked and talked."
She wanted to retain the important parts of the letters, she said, and she wanted to focus on certain themes: the atmosphere of the war; the differences in today's values and lifestyles; the development of their characters; Jack's poker-playing and the ingenuity of the Seabees; and her home-front work, life and experiences with the early civil rights movement.
From Jane Poulton, Nov. 19, 1943:
"If we try to win by hating Germans and Japanese then we may end up destroying ourselves - not in our lifetime perhaps. We're going to have to live differently when this is over or have another one. . . . I wonder if you will still love me who no longer thinks Negroes are biologically inferior, wants children but not sure women should stay in the home, wants to be part of the whole world and not a reactionary or anachronism whose favorite activity is bridge? You started me on this. Can't turn back now. I've learned to love people too - all kinds."
Poulton said compiling the book, as time-consuming and difficult as it was, proved to be cathartic for her.
"He was the center of my life for 50 years, and I miss him terribly. Putting the book together has been good for me."
She spends her time now writing thank-you letters to the people who helped with the book, letting them know it has been published. And she is thinking of editing letters Jack's mother wrote to him during the war.
"I'll find something to do," she said. "I always have to have some project to work on."
Jack's return home to Richmond, Oct. 12, 1945:
"A taxi took him to 1300 Grove Ave. where he used the key he had carried throughout the war. I was standing in the living room waiting for him. Neither of us said a word. He put his arms around me and I had my head on his shoulder. We stood there for a while and then sat on the couch and talked about the baby. For the next week I tossed aside warnings about gaining weight and we dined each night in a good restaurant."
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB