evening visit to our home where he enjoyed my mom's fried chicken and homemade ice cream. I have always loved Last Kiss, and was surprised to read the letter, but apparently, he "worked" (?) with my dad who was a realtor, and they had a close personal friendship. He said the song was a gold record, sold 15 million copies, made 4 or 5 million dollars and he only got $2700. He was on food stamps to make ends meet, was on his sixth wife and had a 17 mo old daughter. Who was he and what song made him famous? Quoting the article enclosed in the letter, J Frank worked as an orderly in a small nursing home in Lufkin, TX where he grew up, making $250 a month. Intrigued I began my quest for information. Going through old boxes, I found a letter to my dad from J Frank Wilson dated June 1974. Kim G from San AntonioMy father recently passed.Charles from MissouriThis couldn't be about a crash in 1962, the song was released July 1961.Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind I found the love that I knew I would miss.īut now she's gone, even though I hold her tight. I raised her head, and when she smiled, and said, Well, when I woke up, the rain was pourin' down. I couldn't stop, so I swerved to the right. The car was stalled, the engine was dead. So I can see my baby when I leave this world. PS Please excuse my not mailing this - but I don’t know your new address.She's gone to heaven, so I got to be good, But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I - I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone - but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive. And now it is clearly even more true - you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else - but I want you to stand there. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures. We started to learn to make clothes together - or learn Chinese - or getting a movie projector. I never thought until just now that we can do that. I want to have problems to discuss with you - I want to do little projects with you. I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead - but I still want to comfort and take care of you - and I want you to love me and care for me. It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you - almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic and I thought there was no sense to writing.īut now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I know how much you like to hear that - but I don’t only write it because you like it - I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you. Reproduced with permission of Richard Feynman’s Estate.) The Letter (This letter, along with 124 other fascinating pieces of correspondence, can be found in the bestselling book, Letters of Note. It remained unopened until after his death in 1988. 16 months later, in October of 1946, Richard wrote his late wife a heartbreaking love letter and sealed it in an envelope. In June of 1945, his wife and high-school sweetheart, Arline, passed away after succumbing to tuberculosis. In the 1940s, he played a part in the development of the atomic bomb in 1986, as a key member of the Rogers Commission, he investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and identified its cause in 1965, he and two colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize “for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles.” He was also an incredibly likeable character, and made countless other advances in his field, the complexities of which I will never be able understand. Richard Feynman was one of the best-known and most influential physicists of his generation.
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