Grandparents' love letters found in loft offered granddaughter new insight into her past

Before they founded the Pensacola School of Liberal Arts in 1969, newlyweds Bea and William "Bill" Holston were exchanging love letters across the ocean.

Bill Holston died in 2011, four years after his wife's passing. But now, a collection of love letters he wrote to Bea beginning just weeks after the couple married on April 7, 1951, have been compiled into a book, "My Dearest Bea: Love Letters from the USS Midway." The letters and book have been compiled by the couple's granddaughter Peyton Roberts and the book is available through Anchor Line Press.

Just days after the couple's wedding, Bill Holston, a trumpet player in the Navy Band, was serving on the USS Midway and heading to various ports in Cuba and the Mediterranean. The letters, which date from 1951 and 1952, were found in the loft of the couple's home off Bayou Chico in Warrington after they passed.

Roberts first read the letters in 2014 in Virginia Beach, where her husband was active-duty military.

"The letters were actually mailed to their new home in Norfolk, Virginia, where they lived in a travel-trailer at an RV park,'' Roberts said. "Here I was sitting in Virginia Beach just 7 miles away from where my grandmother would have read the letters. I just thought that was so incredible."

She said reading the letters stirred deep emotions in her.

"I was really missing my grandparents and so when I read the letters, I could immediately hear my grandfather's voice," Roberts said. "It was really a different side of their lives that we didn't really know about."

Roberts intersperses the letters from her grandfather with her own short passages reflecting on the letters as a "granddaughter and post-9/11 Navy spouse." The book also features one letter from Bea to her husband ? a letter that he brought home with him after his service on the USS Midway. That letter also featured a poem Bea wrote about their young marriage.

The first letter in the book was written from the USS Midway while the traveling the Atlantic Coast toward Cuba. It is dated "Wednesday, May 23, 1951." It starts thusly:

"The weather has gotten very hot and sticky. We must be nearing Florida."

Later, in the same letter, he wrote:

"Man I sure hated leaving you the other night. All I want is to get out of this ridiculous outfit. The only place I should be is at home with you. Let’s face it, baby, I love you something terrible. You just make me flip, to put it mildly. I have never expected married life to begin to equal what I have experienced in the short time we’ve been married. We’ve really had a swell time, haven’t we?"

Months later, there is a poem from Bill to Bea:

"The sunset beyond the mountains,The moonlight on the seaCould not for an instant captureThe beauty that is thee.For beauty is more than seeing things,that’s just a minor part.Beauty is that which is hiddenWithin the holiest heart."

"The letters are beautiful," Roberts said. "My grandfather was very philosophical. He loved music and worked hard and he couldn't wait to get out of the Navy and get home and be with my grandmother."

Roberts said she edited and compiled the letters into book form to cement the legacy of the couple's love for their descendants, and because she though the many students who were taught by Holston might enjoy reading them.

You may like: Late UWF professor joins U.S. presidents, Star Trek cast on endless journey through space

Bill Holston, along with his wife, founded the Pensacola School of Liberal Arts in 1969. He was previously a longtime band director at Pensacola High School and also spent one year as principal of Woodham High School.

After the Navy, he continued his music education at New York University and later obtained a master's degree from Florida State University. He was band director for PHS when the "Fighting Tiger Band" performed at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the only band from Florida to perform. In 1967, he would earn a master's degree in public administration.

Holston was also fond of the sea and loved to spend time on the water. In 1975, Holston was gifted a 55-foot replica of an old Viking ship, "Loki," complete with sea serpent ornamentation. The ship was used by the Liberal Arts school's sailing team for a while. It was damaged by Hurricane Ivan and can now can be seen outside Joe Patti's Seafood where it is prominently displayed off of Main Street.

Roberts said she is thrilled to share her grandparents' love story and added that the book offers glimpses of what life was like more than 70 years ago.

"My grandfather wasn't just an average sailor on a ship," she said. "He was the trumpet player in the U.S. Navy Band on an aircraft carrier in the years following World War II. The Cold and the Korean War were underway and while those conflicts didn't directly impact the tours he was on during the deployments, the letters were written with all this going on in the background. So you get a unique slice of Naval life as a musician on an aircraft carrier that's very different from, say, what my husband has experienced post 9/11 in his Navy service."

"My Dearest Bea: Love Letters from the USS Midway" is available in paperback and digital versions and can be purchased through Amazon and Kindle and other booksellers.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola School of Liberal Arts Bill Bea Holston love letters in book