New Zealand Penpal

I'm excited to be going to New Zealand in February on a tour of its lighthouses and sites. This will be another tour with the U.S. Lighthouse Society. If you haven't done a lighthouse tour with this group, you're missing a great time!

I dug out my New Zealand file this morning to start my research and preparations. In the process, I found some wonderful old correspondence from the 1980s from Allan Martin-Bus, who was my NZ penpal years ago. He sent me a wealth of pictures, stamps, postcards, newspaper clippings, and other goodies.

Best of all, he wrote letters. People don't hand-write letters much anymore. Soon, it may be a lost art, and penmanship might go the way of the dusky sparrow (now extinct 😒). In the 1980s, NZ seemed far, far away to me. In 2019, almost forty years later, I am thrilled to be going there. So you can see why I treasure Allan's letters and want to share them. 

I think he was in his early twenties when the letters below were written. He sent me a picture of himself with one letter, and he looked young. We never talked by phone, and of course email wasn't available yet, at least for me. So the great ocean post was our way of communicating. Note the dates on his letters and his old address.

Sometime toward 1990, I lost touch with Allan. I moved around a lot in those days, married to a USN officer, so I think he just gave up trying to track me down after every move. For awhile, he sent letters to me via my in-laws, but even that stopped. I wrote back to him in the late 1990s at the same address on his letters, but my missive came back undeliverable. In recent years, I have searched for him online and with social media. No luck. It would be great to get to NZ in February and find him!