One Ohio woman is carrying on the legacy of her father through a book of his letters and writings to home during his time in the Navy.
Carol Butler is a military daughter who looked up to her dad as a hard-working honest man. Her father, B.H. Mauer served in the Navy right before and during world war 2. Butler had received the boxes of his writings to home after he passed in the 90s, but it wasn’t until this year that she started to really dive into his past memories.
“I was ready because my father had been gone for so many years, I really missed him and it was like hearing his voice again,” says Butler.
Hundreds of letters captured what life was like out at sea. One of the letters was even being written at the exact moment he learned about Pearl Harbor. It showed Butler a side of her dad that she didn’t see as she was growing up.
She says, “I was steeped in his thoughts and his words and got to rediscover him, discover aside I didn’t know of him.”
Butler started working on publishing the letters at the beginning of the COVID-19 shutdowns, and couldn’t help but draw parallels between the situation the world is now, and what her father was going through in the war. She says she felt a sense of shared uncertainty.
“We know history now, we know what happens in World War II, but as he’s writing these letters it’s all unknown so I’m immersed in the moment with him,” says Butler.
The book is titled “With Love and Affection, Your Sailor Ben.” It was important for Butler to properly memorialize her father in a way like this, and says that there’s not many people left from the World War 2 era today. She encourages other people to dig into their family’s past as well.
“We’re the ones who knew and loved that group the best so we need to speak now and share now what we have to preserve it.”
Though not many prints are available, Butler is selling the 400+ page book for $20 a copy. To purchase a book, you can contact her at butler.carol@att.net.
