Pals for Life -- 33 Years Of Penpalling

By Pete Weatherby, CO

I am always amazed - and cheered - to hear of really longtime pen friend relationships, especially when the friends have never met in person.

That's how it was with Betty Riedl of Fort Madison, Iowa, and Joan Walker of Lancashire, England - until recently, when Walker flew to the U.S. to visit her pen pal of 33 years. It took Riedl years persuading Walker to make the trip to Fort Madison, but when her English friend finally did it, it turned out to be "the trip of a lifetime."

Over the years, they'd exchanged about 800 letters and countless photos, so when they met in person there wasn't a trace of awkwardness. They knew each other right away and in minutes were chatting like they'd known each other all their lives - which, in fact, they had!

Perhaps that was because they had formed a strong bond over the years, starting when both were young wives raising young families. As time passed, their relationship grew closer, through both the joys and sorrows of life that are part of the human condition.

Walker says that Riedl helped her through the pain of dealing with her husband's terminal cancer, while Riedl was helped to deal with the difficulty of adopting young children by Walker's support.

Neither can remember exactly how their pen friendship started, but they believe it was probably through one obtaining the other's address through a pen pal friendship book.

Comfortably sitting in the living room of Riedl's Fort Madison home, they looked at the many photos they'd exchanged over the years. Riedl especially enjoys her pictures of her friend's 150-year-old Lancashire stone cottage, while Walker claims she has more pictures of Riedl's family than her own!

They write each other three to four times a week. What about? Their "everyday lives" - family, what they've been doing, bread baking, jam making, holidays and outings, even things that happen in the street. Walker likes to tell Riedl about her twin 80-year-old neighbor ladies who love their gardening, and about the doings in her craft group. She can't write a short letter, she says, averaging three to four pages. "My writing is more scribbly," smiled Riedl.

Both women have developed many pen pal contacts over the years. Rield has a total of 100 pals, 20 overseas and 80 in the United States, though some write only once or twice a year. Walker guesses that she has spent thousands of dollars on postage and has lots of overseas friends, including ones in Ireland, Israel and New Zealand.

The wonderful thing about the hobby, she says, is still being at home and having an interest all over the world. She started penpalling as a young girl, when she wrote to several German pals during World War II. They were young boys on the gun crews, just like the English boys, and were conscripted, so they had no choice. Their letters to Walker were censored, and eventually Red Cross cards informed her that her soldier pen pals had all been killed. Riedl wrote to American soldiers during the war - one of whom told her how he had played dead to survive a mass execution.

Walker and Riedl, with her husband Arnold, spent three weeks traveling around Iowa, visiting Branson, Nauvoo, the Amana Colonies and of course Fort Madison, which Walker was familiar with from her friend's pictures and letters.

"It's just a beautiful country," was Joan Walker's reacton. She was especially interested in anything about the Amish village life, because it was so different from anything she'd known in England. But Riedl wouldn't allow Walker to share some of the driving, because "she drives on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the road!"

With all the pen friends they have, checking the mailbox can be a joy for them both. But sometimes it can be a disappointment - as we all know - when it's "all junk and no letters," as Walker put it! One thing she has found through foreign penpalling is that people are much the same the world over, and that their problems are "just the same as yours."

For both Betty and Joan, it was indeed "the trip of a lifetime," and it's wonderful to read about such meetings.