The Tribune

IN a time when we stare appalled, shocked and helpless at the horrors Ukrainians face as they try to defend their sovereign nation against an unprovoked and unthinkable attack, why when we watch with hearts breaking as families are being ripped apart, when we see strangers stepping around dead bodies in the street, why now should we care about letter-writing?

It seems so banal, but is it really?

Letters, the old-fashioned kind that people wrote by hand, always connected us. They connected lovers keeping the flame alive when they were not together. They connected mothers and fathers with their offspring away at school, friends who were separated. And they connected soldiers away from home with those they left behind.

Millions of us saved millions and millions of those letters. None of us – or I am guessing almost none of us – save e-mails to re-read, to savour, to rekindle a memory of a moment to share. Emails are practical, but they are not treasures like letters were.

I am not knocking emails or suggesting that we trade digital discourse for handwritten notes. Good gawd, no. Like most businesspeople, I probably get close to a hundred emails a day and respond to at least half and that may just the beginning of an ongoing electronic communication. Last year, I cleared out more than 50,000 just in my inbox and I thought I was managing them daily. I confess, a few of them I could easily eliminate by unsubscribing but there is something to be said for pretending that I could invest in certain stocks or create a cart of a luxury good that I could give to someone in the family. The fact that I never do either does not negate the hope that someday I may.

So the reason for caring about letters has nothing to do with the desire to do away with or supplant emails, texts (do people still do that other than for sending a code to complete a password change?) or other social media engagement. There are really two reasons for retrieving the almost lost art of letter writing. In some ways, they overlap. In others, they are important for the distinctiveness.

First, the act of writing a letter takes us out of ourselves. It lifts us above our self-absorbed state of mind and forces us to focus our attention on the person we are writing to. Instead of thinking about what we should be doing now or need to do next, we are carving out a message that says to the person who will receive it that we care enough about them to share thoughts and ideas, to wish them a happy birthday, anniversary, to say thank you or just say thinking of you. In short, the simple act of writing a letter brings out a better, more thoughtful, us.

IT ALSO LEAVES ITS MARK

Great leaders, great literary characters, great men and women are known today not just by their acts, but by the letters they left behind. More than 2,000 years ago philosophers Plato and Aristotle shared their teachings by communicating through the written word and teaching that word to students. Even in the modern era, letters have left their mark on history. Among the most thoughtfully penned was the April 16, 1963 letter Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote from the Birmingham jail after the riots of Selma. MLK dissected all the answers to the questions white officials posed including why are you outsiders in Alabama? He explained international linkages and said he was in Birmingham “because injustice is here.” The famous line of that letter “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” has become a mantra of causes that came after the racial rants of Birmingham were assigned to sorrowful and shameful history.

LETTERS LAST

It is easy to delete an email. It takes a lot more fortitude to tear up a letter someone has taken the time to write. Don’t I know? I have drawers full of letters from my daughters, one from my father who died more than 50 years ago, cards from college friends, all mixed up with children’s school projects that, like letters, I could not part with. When I think of someday moving, I wonder what I would do with those drawers of paper that I have saved through the years, and how much easier it is to give away clothes or furniture or laptops that are just slightly outdated than it is to throw away a single letter.

There is another reason for writing. It may not be as compelling but it is every bit as interesting. The movement of the hand in making connecting letters and words, says Martha Stewart, the mere act of handwriting, grounds us. That may be true.

But in my far less revered opinion, the reason why the nearly lost art of letter writing matters more now than ever is because our need to connect, really connect, has never been greater. The pandemic separated us from the reality we knew before. The war in Ukraine is tearing our hearts out and the surest way to heal is to do so together, to show others we care, even if it is just a few simple lines on a piece of paper.

KYLE CHEA - WHEN ONE YOUNG MAN WITH A VISION MAKES A DIFFERENCE

IF YOU drive along Lake Cunningham in the late afternoon and look not at the houses that line the inland lake nor at the prominent Fusion cineplex at the top of the hill, but at the shoreline and the water itself you will see what looks almost like a moving apparition -- a swift, timeless, floating activity, dozens of individuals in sleek rowing machines, members of a rowing club. They meet every day but Sunday between 4:30 and 6 pm.

You are looking at the work of a single man who built a team, created an officially recognized sport in The Bahamas and gave rise to the largest organization of its kind in the Caribbean.

His name is Kyle Chea. In 2006, he was the recipient of the country’s highest scholarship, All-Bahamas Merit Scholarship awarded by the Lyford Cay Foundation in conjunction with The Central Bank and Ministry of Education to the single most promising student in The Bahamas. A Queen’s College graduate he went to Vassar, graduated, worked in the financial industry in Hong Kong, later in New York, for two years at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he was the only Bahamian in the employ of the government at that time who spoke fluent Mandarin. He was recruited by Baha Mar where he was encouraged to go for an MBA and again won a scholarship from the Lyford Cay Foundation.

Along the way he discovered a love of rowing. By the time he graduated, he was captain of his team. When he came back to Nassau, he knew the perfect place, a lake with ample shoreline, limited activity, protected from strong ocean breezes. All Chea had to do was get permission to use the lake, form a club, get equipment, have the club recognized by the international federation and, yes, he would have to get a few folks interested in a sport that did not exist in any formal manner in The Bahamas before.

Chea loved rowing too much to let a few details like that stand in the way. In 2012, he launched the Nassau Rowing Club. Today, it has a full-time coach. Interested students from underserved schools and communities are able to participate for free. Chea is not alone in paddling rowing to a new finish line. Others help to raise funds. They arrange transportation for students coming from inner city schools. Everyone has equipment to use and a rowing blazer and Chea did not just introduce the teamwork and coordination of a rowing culture to The Bahamas, he helped put rowing on the map of the Caribbean.

With some 54 members, the Nassau Rowing Club is the largest in the region.