During World War II, Hazel Hobbs was a double Blue Star mother. Every morning before Roy Clements, the mailman, arrived, she wrote a letter to either Charles, in the Army Air Corps, or Kelley, in the Marines. And they wrote her back. The letters written from their military service were collected in a duffle bag under the stairs in Hennessey, Oklahoma.
Charles wrote from training bases in Texas, Illinois, and Tennessee, from his combat postings in North Africa, and from his hospital bed in England. At the end of his service, he and his new wife, Kathleen Cain Hobbs, wrote from New Jersey.
Hobbs's letters detail his training as a pilot, but they also are packed with news about the home folks in Hennessey. As his letters show, he carried the hearts and hopes of his small town with him until he came back home.