The Katrina Letters: New York Encounter 2013

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Imagine knowing, really knowing the hearts of your parents as teenagers. Imagine hearing their thoughts and feelings, of being right there with them as they courted one another.

Chris Vath had such a privilege. He is part of a family who discovered, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a duffel bag filled with 500 letters his parents (pictured here at their wedding reception) had exchanged during three years of separation during World War II, beginning when his mom was 16 and still in high school and his father was 18 and serving in the U.S. Navy. Although Katrina flooded his childhood home with nine feet of water, the letters inside the bag survived, still legible. 

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