Darling McGillicuddy

When it came time to find a name for the book, a phrase had struck us from Harold’s letters. Many were addressed to “Darling McGillicuddy”. Ruth Ann recalled hearing the nickname her dad had for her mom, an inside joke between her parents. It reflected the sweet intimacy in his words that survives to this day – despite the distance, and actions of war that infuse the letters.

Visually, the cover was inspired by Harold’s actual 1940s airmail letters. Ruth Ann didn’t feel our first draft had the romantic quality that she was anticipating, but she found the idea intriguing. The sticking point, for her, was the absence of photographs of Harold and Thelma. Our solution was to create penny stamps featuring their portraits.

The evolution of this project from a collection of letters to an annotated story enhanced with supporting facts and images happened gradually. Editor Leslie Jennings had studied the practice of Oral History, where an interviewer annotates the subject’s memories for clarity. Harold’s letters seemed like they could use some of that attention. It started with making sense of the dramatis personae in the letters. We debated the value of explaining who these people were within Harold’s world . With Ruth Ann’s support, and the example of this practice in other historic books to guide us , we determined it would enhance the letters for readers. Then it was places. And things. And the context of the war. We had Harold’s incredible collection of war time photographs, but there were many obscure (to us!) references which lacked photographic representation. It was a short leap to searching archives across Canada and the Imperial War Museum for available imagery. Then Ruth Ann started bringing us Harold’s collection of souvenirs. Everything from the buttons from Harold’s dress uniform (the jacket was long gone) to silk escape maps to Dutch wooden tchotchkes. Max Gabaldo took on the task of photographing these gems.

The initial design was technically well organized, but when we presented, Ruth Ann expressed that it was too dry. Our solution: to take a scrapbook-style approach with the assets, to enhance he romance of the story.

Each season that Harold was overseas with the RCAF was broken out with a chapter spread outlining the time span what was happening in the war and a postal frank. We added the postal frank (or stamp) as a way of reinforcing the underlying mail theme.

Ruth Ann found the box of letters tucked away on the top shelf of a closet after both her parents had died. They were written by her father, RCAF Flight Lieutenant Harold Whipp, to her mother Thelma Edwards Whipp during World War ll between 1942-1945.

Although Harold and Thelma’s life after the war was beyond the scope of this project, we thought it was important to pull the curtain back a bit and show readers a glimpse of the ensuing years- including Harold’s successful banking career, the birth of their daughter Ruth Ann Whipp and the life-long connection they had to the Nighthawks, his wartime squadron.