Is letter writing a dying art?

Recently, my wife and I gave our attic a long overdue downsizing. For two days, we hauled several truckloads of stuff to Goodwill and the dump. It was a physically exhausting but rewarding experience that took us on a nostalgic journey into our past.

As we opened box after box, I was reminded that attics are like our personal archives and museums. As we worked I was excited to find two boxes of letters mostly between my wife and me when I was a VMI cadet and she was a student at Mary Baldwin College.

Soon after finishing in the attic, I started reading the letters spanning from October 1966 to the spring of 1969. They chronicle a different world from that of young people today. Text messaging, e-mails, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and cell phones were far into the future. Long-distance phone calls were expensive then and rarely made. So, we handwrote lots and lots of letters to each other - hundreds. As a historian, I have read countless old letters, giving me insight into the lives of other people and their times. Now I was peering into my own life long ago.

Our letters unfold a story of two young people falling in love, worrying about grades and exams, scheduling dates, bragging about their tans, suffering through stifling summer heat without air conditioning and making plans for the future. Like almost every cadet before and after me, I griped frequently about VMI. After being slapped with demerits, penalty tours and confinement for rust on my rifle, I exclaimed: "It's times like this that I hate this place!"

Most of the letters discussed our daily routines and had their share of mushy prose, but events of a tumultuous time appeared frequently in our words. Knowing I would enter the Army after VMI, the war in Vietnam hung ominously over our future. We commented on assassinations and race riots. We described heated political debates with our roommates.

The last letters in the collection reflected the anticipation and excitement we felt as our wedding approached after my VMI graduation. Once we married, however, our correspondence ended. The number of letters to my family and friends also began to drop. Why?

It is no coincidence that my diminished correspondence followed a national trend. Recently, the U.S. Postal Service announced that the amount of first-class mail delivery has dropped 22 percent since 1996. As is often the case, new, easier and cheaper ways of communicating such as the Internet and cellular phones accelerated a growing trend away from letter writing.

The decline actually started with the introduction of microwave relays and fiber-optic connections in the 1970s, helping make long-distance phone calling more efficient and less expensive. The court-ordered break-up of AT&T ("Ma Bell") in 1982 led to increased competition among long-distance providers, resulting in significant reductions in rates. With low-cost long-distance calling now available, it became easier to "reach out and touch someone" by phone as a then-popular AT&T commercial proclaimed. I, like most Americans, started calling more and writing less. Cell phones have accelerated that process. With rare exception, there is no record of our phone conversations.

Ironically, with the advent of e-mail and other electronic formats, we can connect with people almost anywhere in writing. But most e-mails are quickly composed, ephemeral messages, lacking the thought and feeling that go into a written letter. Retention of electronic communication is another issue. We eventually delete most of our messages to free up space on our computers. Unless we make hard copies, most of our deleted messages are gone forever.

Historians are concerned that the demise of traditional writing will affect the way the past is researched and interpreted in the future. Written documents, the most important means of communication for ages, have provided scholars with a unique view of history that other evidence simply cannot yield. How will future historians reconstruct our times from e-mail, which is often fleeting and short-lived? The situation is serious enough that projects such as George Mason University's Center for History and New Media are under way to preserve and present electronic documentation.

I realize that there are upsides and downsides to technological advances, but nothing substitutes for the richness of information that a good collection of letters contains, like those treasures I rediscovered in our attic. I'm afraid, however, that letter writing is a dying art and something is being lost in the process.