Return to Sender: A Church Finds Letters Lost Since World War II

by Stella Kapetan

On May 19, 1943, during World War II, LeRoy Segar Kussy was stationed at Sheppard Field in Texas and wrote a letter to his pastor at Chicago’s Irving Park Lutheran Church asking for a reference for his application for Air Cadet. “I also want to thank you and the church for sending me the lovely prayer book,” he added. The Rev. Joshua Oden tucked the letter in a box along with the more than 1,000 others from parishioners away at war with whom he corresponded. Kussy was killed 13 months later at age 22 when the B-24 bomber on which he was a top turret gunner was shot down over France. Seventy years later, in 2014, the church gave the letter to his family as part of its Return to Sender project. “I’m sure I was in tears,” Joan Hoyman recently said by phone from her California home about first reading her half-brother’s letter. “I’m in tears now.”

The Return to Sender project started in 2006 after Oden’s box of letters was discovered by three parishioners in a second floor, seldom entered, walk-in storage closet during a major renovation of the more than 100-year-old church building at Harding Street and Belle Plaine Avenue on the northwest side. The project aims to return the letters to those who penned them or a family member if the author was killed during the war or survived but has since died. The church so far has found recipients for the letters of 137 out of the 236 letter writers.

After the letters were discovered, they were given to lifelong parishioner and expert in the church’s history, Ralph Greenslade, to search for recipients. He said he and his wife “sorted them out, dusted them off, cleaned them and organized them by name.” In “a labor of love” he scours the internet, makes phone calls across the country and searches Social Security death indexes for next of kin.

Some families, like Kussy’s, discovered the project through their genealogy research. The Kussy family had a summer home in Florida during the war. Hoyman’s daughter, Juli Hoyman, was traveling through Florida in 2013 and posted a vacation photo on her Facebook page.

“My mother saw it and said, ‘That’s where I last saw my brother before he left and never returned,’” Juli Hoyman said. That piqued her curiosity about her uncle who was killed before she was born. Her research led her to the church site. She contacted Greenslade and then her mother, who can still recall how Kussy, nine years her senior, would pull her in her wagon and would walk with her on the Florida beach searching for colored seashells.

“He was very good, very honest, very caring,” Joan Hoyman said. “He was lots of fun to be with. I loved him very much.”

He is buried in the Ardennes American Cemetery and Memorial in Neupre, Belgium.

“ He Was Incredibly Proud of Me”

Alfred Holmquist survived the war and died in 1969. To give his letters to his family, Greenslade had only to turn to fellow parishioner, Holly Lundquist - Holmquist’s daughter. “I was beside myself with emotion,” Lundquist recently said about learning of her father’s letters. “I was incredibly moved by them. I remember the feeling that I was now holding in my hands a piece of paper my father held in his hands a long time ago. I don’t have anything of my dad’s in his handwriting. They are a connection to another place and time.”

Lundquist said her father, nicknamed Butch, was “a big family man,” devoted to her, her sister Bonnie and their mother Dorothy. He helped Lundquist with school science projects and taught her skills to be self-sufficient. “I learned to mow grass,” she said. “I learned how to paint. He taught me how to change a tire.”

“He was incredibly proud of me,” Lundquist said, recalling that he left early from work to attend her National Honor Society induction and how happy he was when she headed off to college since he had to leave high school to help support his family as an apprentice butcher during the Great Depression. He was a butcher at various grocery store chains for many years.

Rev. Joshua Oden

Irving Park Lutheran Church

Irving Park Lutheran Church

Irving Park Lutheran Church

Kussy's confirmation photo

Irving Park Lutheran Church

Kussy in uniform

Irving Park Lutheran Church

Joan Hoyman, Kussy's half-sister.

Holmquist, like most of the letter writers, was the child of Swedish immigrants who had settled near the church in the area between Lawrence, Irving Park, Pulaski and California. He grew up with his parents, sister and four brothers in the house his father built on the 3700 block of West Agatite Avenue. He spent three years in the Army stationed in Germany, where he repaired ammunition. His letters to Oden reflect his deep faith and fondness for the parishioners. “Please include me in your prayers at the many fine services you have planned for Palm Sunday,” he wrote in April 1943. The following month he wrote: “This morning I attended Palm Sunday Service at the Post chapel. It was very nice but not like the beautiful service at Irving Park Lutheran Church. May God bless our church and our people." He died six weeks after walking Lundquist down the aisle at her wedding at the church where he had spent his whole life. Many of the letter writers shared common themes. They thanked Oden for his Christmas presents, prayer books and copies of the church’s newsletter, “Tidings,” that one wrote made him “as usual feel a lot better spiritually and mentally.” They mentioned they were attending Sunday church services, expressed their happiness at being remembered at the church and requested that parishioners write to them. Some expressed loneliness and a longing for home. Oden, who was the pastor from 1908 to 1954 and pastor emeritus until his death in 1969, thoughtfully tailored his responses to the individual and expressed interest in their experiences and well-being. He asked one “to please tell me about your daily program, what you do during the day, what type of amusements you are having. If there is any problem I can share with you, I shall be so glad to do so.”

Alfred and Dorothy Holmquist's wedding photo

Provided by the family

Alfred, daughter Holly, Dorothy, and daughter Bonnie

Provided by the family

The Search Continues

The church still hopes to find recipients for the letters of 99 writers. Leonard Robert Hansen is among them. Greenslade’s research showed that Hansen was the son of Mr. and Mrs. J.P. Hansen and was a student at Illinois Institute of Technology when he joined the Marine Corps in 1942. He fought in many bloody battles in the South Pacific and was killed on July 13, 1944 while guarding a cave entrance in Saipan in the Marianas Islands. Hansen wrote this letter to Oden 10 months before he died:

“Dear Pastor,

I am very sorry to have neglected writing to you before. I wish to thank you and the people of our church for writing me and sending me the gift for Christmas. I received that gift while I was on Guadalcanal and also a couple of letters from girls of our church. The messages were read in a foxhole that, I assure you, proved to be a great comfort. It was hard to get anything to read on that island and the ‘Tidings’ was read cover to cover not only by me but also a foxhole buddy of mine.

Although there was death all about us, the island was very beautiful where bombs hadn’t done much damage. Church services were held rain or shine under the open skies except for tall coconut trees which gave little shelter.

Yes, even some parts of war are beautiful and what little beauty there is, is fully appreciated.

Yours, Leonard R. Hansen”

For more information about the Irving Park Lutheran Church’s “Return to Sender” project, visit the church’s website at IPLC. org. Select the tab “Church Life and News.” The office email address is office@iplc.org.

Leonard Hansen confirmation photo

Irving Park Lutheran Church