14 I reminded the Reverend Nelson how each morning he would open our little country town's grammar school with a prayer over his assembled students. I told him that whatever positive things I had done since had been influenced at least in part by his morning school prayers.
15 In the letter to my grandmother, I reminded her of a dozen ways she used to teach me how to tell the truth, to share, and to be forgiving and considerate of others. I thanked her for the years of eating her good cooking, the equal of which I had not found since. Finally, I thanked her simply for having sprinkled my life with stardust.
16 Before I slept, my three letters went into our ship's office mail sack. They got mailed when we reached Tulagi Island.
17 We unloadedcargo, reloaded with something else, then again we put to sea in the routine familiar to us, and as the days became weeks, my little personal experience receded. Sometimes, when we were at sea, a mail ship would rendezvous and bring us mail from home, which, of course, we accordedtopmost priority.
18 Every time the ship's loudspeakerrasped, "Attention! Mail call!" two hundred-oddshipmates came pounding up on deck and clustered about the two seamen, standing by those precious bulging gray sacks. They were alternately pulling out fistfuls of letters and barkingsuccessive names of sailors who were, in turn, shouting back "Here! Here!" amid the pushing.
19 One "mail call" brought me responses from Grandma, Dad, and the Reverend Nelson -- and my reading of their letters left me not only astonished but more humbled than before.
20 Rather than saying they would forgive that I hadn't previously thanked them, instead, for Pete's sake, they were thanking me -- for having remembered, for having considered they had done anything so exceptional.
21 Always the college professor, my dad had carefully avoided


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