When I don’t hear from you for a long time I get very despondent and start imagining all sorts of things. You could be dead for all I know. I think your mother would have enough consideration for me to tell me if anything were wrong with you. I hope so anyway.
If it weren’t for my mother and sisters I would not have received any mail at all in Feb. Thank goodness they care enough for me to write.
I guess you thought I stood a chance of being released with the RB 47 boys. I also thought this but we were mistaken. Things don’t look near so bright any more. In fact it will probably be a long time before chances will be as good again as they were then. If they hadn’t been here then maybe it would have been me.
I would like for you to start sending some magazines again also some books. Send anything you think I would like. I haven’t received any of the magazines they told me they would give me starting in January.
Maybe you could get the Embassy to do this and save yourself a lot of trouble and also custom duties. Also you could have the Embassy cut the number of cartons of cigarettes to three a month. I have accumulated several cartons and don’t need so many.
I would also like to have some more pictures if you have any. I only have the two that were taken at Nell’s in November.
Why hasn’t Nell answered my letter? Do you know? Tell her and Fred I said hello and hope they are fine. I’ll bet the children are growing. I know I wouldn’t recognize Tammy Gay.
Barbara, I want you to send my father one thousand dollars as soon after the receipt of this letter as possible. I am sure you have it available.
It was a very big disappointment to me to learn that Kennedy stated in one of his press conferences that my situation had not been discussed when the SU and US officials discussed the release of the other two pilots. I don’t know why but I expected them to discuss it whether or not anything was done about it.
Darling, I want you to write more often. I have only received eight letters from you since you left Moscow in August. That is eight letters in seven months. Not a very good average no matter how a person looks at it. I expected and wanted you to write more without my having to ask you.
It certainly appears that you don’t think very much of me if the number of letters are any judge. I can’t imagine what you could be doing that occupies so much of your time so that you can not spare thirty minutes or so a week to write. I can only think that you don’t want to write because I know you have the time.
I want you to be sure and start numbering each letter so that I can tell if any of them are lost or missing. Maybe there was one on the plane that crashed in Belgium. Only you know that.
Barbara, I am very sorry to have had to say so much about letters but I am very worried. You apparently don’t realize how much mail from you means to me. The receipt of a letter is the only bright spot in my life. I am not begging you to write. I only want letters from you if you want to write them. If you do not want to write me then please let me know so that I won’t worry when no letters arrive.
I guess that is about all for now. Please answer soon and remember I love you very much and can’t help worrying when I don’t hear from you.
P.S. I don’t know when this will be mailed. No one has been around to pick up mail for the last two days. I have asked someone to come today but so far no one.
P.S.S. I also need some stationery.44
Around this time, he addressed his feelings about Barbara in his journaclass="underline"
I was almost sick with worry and I was extremely nervous and not able to sleep at all because my mind would not relax. (My cell mate put up with much during this time). It turned out that I had no need to be worried at all. On March 11th I received a letter from my wife with no mention at all of the fact that she had waited 45 days. (I know there was no letter in between because I had asked her and she said she would send me a copy of Kennedy’s inauguration speech and she enclosed it in this February 21st letter. One month and one day after the speech was in the paper she mailed it to me. If she had written earlier she would have sent it for it was dated Jan. 20). She, in her letter, started as if she had only written the week before, mentioned she had been visiting relatives in North Carolina and had found someone, for the first time since May, to bowl and play golf with. Her letter jumped from one subject to another as if she couldn’t think of anything to write or as if she were only performing a very unpleasant duty and anything would do to fill up the pages.
I must admit that I was very angry. That is putting it mildly. There is no excuse what-so-ever for her not writing more during this period of time. It only takes a few minutes to write a letter and let someone know that a person is all right.
Not counting the two letters I received before she came to Moscow in August I have received nine letters from her. Total I have received eleven that is an average of one a month. If the number of letters are any indication of the amount of love she has for me then we should have been divorced long ago.
Speaking of divorce, I am at the present time firmly determined to divorce her when I return to the States. It should have been done in fifty seven but for some reason I did not do it then. I don’t know why now that I think back on it. I thought at the time that I loved her too much to let her go but now I don’t know. I have never liked divorces and I hate the thoughts of getting one but I know that I can never make the kind of life I want with any woman who, while drawing her husband’s pay which he has sacrificed several months of his freedom, so far, does not have enough consideration for him to write a few letters which takes very little time when one considers the fact that she is not working and has nothing to do.
I do not mind her enjoying herself while I am here as long as she conducts herself as a wife should. That is all right but I did not expect her to become so engrossed in seeking pleasure and forgetfulness that she forgets that she had a husband.
She has caused me since January, extreme mental suffering. Several times I became so nervous that my hands shake so much that my cell mate wanted to call the doctor. I wouldn’t let him and it would pass after about thirty minutes. The things she has done since we have been married and which now I have plenty of time to remember and think about have made this last year almost unlivable. There have been numerous times that I have thought about stopping all these thoughts for good.
I can never have a future with her because the past will always be between us. I fooled myself for a while but I can not do so in the future. I want a happy home with children. I can never have it with her. There is nothing else to do. I only hope I am able to be firm about this when I am free. I cannot do anything at the present time because I foolishly left her with complete power of attorneys and she can take all I have.45
By the time these anguished words first assaulted me, I was a grown man who had known love and heartbreak, and I was able to experience my father’s despair over his dying relationship as someone who understood the urge to try to save something that was dying. After all, love is a powerful emotion that affects people in different ways. In prison, Dad needed the emotional support of his wife through correspondence. But Barbara was having a difficult time handling the stress, notoriety, and front-page headlines, so she dealt with it in her own self-destructive way. Reading the letters and the journal, I could see how Dad was trying to convince himself that things would work out, but eventually he came to the realization that he could not repair the damage that had been done.