Wednesday, August 27, 1997
Love in a cedar chest
By Ken Ellsworth / Abilene Reporter-News
Abbie Gist owns a hope chest full of treasure, but it is not
one in which thieves would be interested. The chest merely contains
contains old paper.
But written on the 50-year-old pages are love letters, all
penned by B.J. Gist to his wife, Abbie, during World War II.
Mrs. Gist, 78, recently wrote to tell me about the letters.
"I just feel like they (the letters) needed to be remembered,"
she said Tuesday when I called.
The letters were filled with love, passion, and news. And the
cedar chest, she said, was simply overflowing with hundreds of
her husband's letters.
"Every two or three years I get them out and read them
again. I always find something new," Mrs. Gist said. "And
it always makes me feel how much love I had for him and him for
me and what we had over the years. We were so much in love."
B.J. Gist, who died in 1979, was 26 and Mrs. Gist was 23 when
they married in 1942. Her maiden name was Thompson and she was
an Abilene native.
"He told me that he had looked for the right girl for
a long time, but that the first time he saw me he knew that I
was the one," Mrs. Gist said.
He had grown up in Hamby and was an Abilene High and McMurry
graduate. After the war, the couple settled in Hamby.
B.J. Gist farmed and was a director of the state Farm Bureau
for 20 years and was known and loved by thousands, according to
a story written in this newspaper at the time of his death. Mrs.
Gist, following the death of her husband, continued to run the
farm before finally moving to Abilene seven years ago.
During the war, though, B.J. Gist, who was a sergeant in the
Army Air Corps, was a letter writer. He served in Roswell, N.M.,
and the Pacific. He wrote almost every day and he wrote things
down that he would not have said out loud.
"He could say in his letters what he couldn't say otherwise,"
Mrs. Gist said. "Well, you know, we were separated, and it
is not like you are together all the time and could talk. So you
felt like you had to write these things down. If you didn't, you
would feel like you'd just explode. You'd let it all out,"
Mrs. Gist said.
Mrs. Gist, in turn, wrote back every day.
"Soldiers just lived for the letters. They needed that
contact," Mrs. Gist remembered.
I asked her if the people back home during the war were not
in need of letters just as much as the soldiers who were away.
"Oh, sure we were," Mrs. Gist said. "That was
the main wait then. Waiting to hear from your loved one. We just
couldn't wait to get our letters."
She was elated, of course, when the letters came, but her emotions
were opposite when the mail box was empty.
"I was so disappointed and kind of blue for the rest of
the day and then you just waited for the next day."
I asked Mrs. Gist if the chest also contained the letters she
had written to her husband.
"No, I don't know what happened to those. I was just so
happy to get him back when he came home I didn't even think about
my letters," she said.
I asked Mrs. Gist if there was anything that she valued more
than her chest full of love letters.
"Yes," she said. "My two children and my grandson
and some pictures."
Off hand, she could not think of anything else.
This column covers the cities and communities of this part
of West Texas. To contact Ken Ellsworth, call (800) 588-6397 or
(915) 676-6777, or write to P.O. Box 30, Abilene, TX 79604.
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Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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