In an era before text messages and FaceTime, love traveled by envelope — folded carefully, sealed and signed. This Valentine’s Day, Nashvillians can read the words of one local husband who closed a letter to his bride with “love and kisses to the sweetest wife on earth.” More than 80 years later, those words — and dozens like them — are preserved at the Metro Archives of the Nashville Public Library.
The letters belong to Raymond and Jane Whittaker, whose courtship and early marriage unfolded during World War II. Their story is documented in two Metro Archives blog posts: the 2018 feature, “Write, Wire or Call Me Real Soon” (https://library.nashville.gov/blog/2018/02/write-wire-or-call-me-real-soon), and the February 2025 follow-up, “Love and Kisses to the Sweetest Wife on Earth” (https://library.nashville.gov/blog/2025/02/love-and-kisses-sweetest-wife-earth).
Raymond Whittaker was born in 1908 in New Rochelle, New York, but came to Nashville to study at Meharry Medical College. It was there he met Jane Dean. The two lost touch for about two years before reconnecting in 1942 after Raymond enlisted in the U.S. Army (Metro Archives blog, 2018).
At the time, Jane was living in Nashville and working in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at Vanderbilt. Raymond was stationed at Fort Huachuca in Arizona and later at Fort McClellan in Alabama, where he helped organize the 92nd Division Headquarters and served as Assistant Venereal Inspector in the office of the Division Surgeon (2018 blog).
The 2018 blog notes that the letters provide first-hand insight into the experience of an African American soldier in the U.S. Army during World War II. Raymond was connected to the 92nd Infantry Division, a segregated division of African American soldiers. Stationed in Alabama during a period marked by racial segregation and violence, his letters offer rare primary-source perspective on military service and daily life during that era (2018 blog).
But the heart of the collection is love.
In one early letter, Jane described hearing from Raymond as both a “pleasant and sad surprise,” proud of his service but aware that “war is so uncertain” (2018 blog). By fall 1942, their correspondence turned toward marriage. On Nov. 7, 1942, they were married in Alabama.
Shortly after their wedding, Raymond wrote, “My thoughts are always with you. Thinking and dreaming of my wife back in Nashville. If you don’t know it I am the happiest man at Fort McClellan” (2018 blog). Jane echoed his joy, writing that it was “a wonderful thing to have such a sweet and lovely husband.”
The February 2025 blog adds further detail from their October through December 1942 letters, describing Thanksgiving meals spent apart, wartime sugar rationing limited to 26 pounds per person per year, furlough plans beginning Dec. 31, 1942, and even Raymond’s side business selling military shoes and “overseas caps” to fellow soldiers (2025 blog).
After his discharge for medical reasons, the couple lived briefly in New Rochelle before returning permanently to Nashville, where they spent the rest of their lives. Raymond died in 1989; Jane followed in 1999 (2018 blog).
Today, their correspondence — donated in a basket and preserved as the Raymond Whittaker Papers — rests in Metro Archives, part of Nashville’s collective memory.
For modern readers, the letters are more than romantic keepsakes. They are living history — proof that even in wartime, love endured, sealed with hope and signed with love and kisses.
