Letter from Maggie Kershaw FitzSimons, May 5, 1977: 'Thought you would like to read about your Fiesty cousin'

A single sheet of yellow lined paper, short handwritten note in blue ballpoint. Dated ‘May 5, 1977’ at the top right and signed ‘Love Maggie’ at the bottom. This is almost certainly the covering note that accompanied a clipping about Frank L. FitzSimons Sr. (the Hendersonville historian, b. 1893) mounted in the album nearby — page 589 carries the ‘Frank L. FitzSimons Sr. Named Winner of Annual Wolfe Award’ clipping from The Times-News, Hendersonville, Oct. 29, 1977. ‘Your Fiesty cousin’ (Maggie’s spelling of ‘feisty’) therefore refers to Frank Sr., the recipient Amy’s cousin. ‘Maggie’ is Frank Sr.'s wife — Maggie Kershaw FitzSimons. ‘Frankie and Millie’ in the body are Frank L. FitzSimons Jr. (Maggie’s son, the Pacific PT-boat veteran of the 1944 letter on p532) and his wife Millie. ‘May’ is struck through and replaced with ‘16th’ — Maggie corrected herself, settling on a return date of just ‘16th’ (almost certainly May 16th, two weeks after the May 5 letter date).

The covering note for the Frank L. FitzSimons Sr. Wolfe Award clipping mounted nearby (p589). “Your Fiesty cousin” — Maggie’s spelling of ‘feisty’ — refers to her husband Frank L. FitzSimons Sr., the Hendersonville historian and Amy’s cousin. “Frankie and Millie” in the body are Frank L. FitzSimons Jr. (Maggie and Frank Sr.'s son, the Pacific PT-boat veteran of p532’s March 1944 letter) and his wife Millie. “Hank and Carmen” are unidentified — possibly Frank Jr. and Millie’s adult children, or close family friends. The strike-through of ‘May’ suggests Maggie started to write ‘May 16th’ and decided the month was redundant after just dating the letter May 5 — leaving the slightly cryptic ‘Will be back on 16th.’