Pen pals for life: Fourth-grade assignment results in 49-year friendship
By:
Jill Meier, Journal editor
Jill Meier/BV Journal
Leslie (Hutchins) Ruch and Debbie (Oleson) Kribell page through a scrapbook which documents their 49 years – and still going – friendship that was prompted by a fourth-grade writing assignment in 1971.
When Debbie (Oleson) Kribell was tasked with selecting a town anywhere in the world in 1971 for a pen pal writing assignment, the fourth-grade girl, whose family had just moved to Bison, N.D., chose Cape Porpoise, Maine.
“I scoured the maps and I thought Cape Porpoise, Maine, was a really cool name,” Debbie remembers.
In in her own youthful cursive handwriting, Debbie wrote a letter introducing herself and explaining the pen pal assignment. The envelope was addressed to a fourth-grade girl in Cape Porpoise.
When the letter turned up at the tiny Cape Porpoise Post Office – tucked inside the town’s only grocery store – the clerk slipped it into the family of a local fourth-grader. Only he was a boy. So, the family returned the letter to the post office where a woman by the name of Marian Hutchins, a postal employee, was encouraged to take the letter home to her daughter, Leslie, who also happened to be in the fourth grade.
Marian brought the letter home, plunked it on the table before her daughter, told her to open it and read it.
“It’s a pen pal type thing,” Debbie reflects.
Leslie said her mom wrote the original letter and she copied it in her own carefully crafted cursive penmanship. She shared her name, age, June 6 birthdate and that she attends fourth grade at Kennebunkport Consolidated School.
She went on to describe Cape Porpoise as a “small village,” which is part of Kennebunkport and that her home sat right next to the ocean, where she enjoyed her summers swimming, fishing, sailing and bike riding. The letter went on to share her love for cats, Siamese cats more specifically, and her love for her fish, a goldfish named Goldy and a tropical fish she referred to as Blackie. She shared that she had two big sisters and no brothers. And that yes, she accepted her invitation to be pen pals.
After signing off with, “Your friend, Leslie Hutchins,” she tacked on a P.S. “I am a girl even though I have a boy’s name.”
The two girls continued to exchange letters weekly, the first letter arriving in Debbie’s mailbox in 1971.
“To this day, I love mail,” Debbie says.
The exchange of letters continued for decades, and next month, the pen pals will celebrate their 49th year of their long-distance friendship. “We just started writing letters and have kept it up,” Debbie says.
Early on, the pen pals learned about each other’s families. Leslie’s dad was a lobsterman, which Debbie “thought was really cool.”
“Just the stories that you can learn and about different places that we both had visited,” she adds.
Besides the letters, the girls exchanged presents – mostly of significance to their home state.
“I think I was in the eighth grade and I received this can opener that you said you stole from your dad. It had Maine on it, and I still have it. It’s my favorite one and I can go pull it out of the drawer right now,” Debbie said.
After all these years, Leslie said she’d long forgot what she had done.
Six years ago, Leslie sent Debbie a case of fresh lobsters for her birthday.
“What a party did we have!” Debbie reflects. “She wasn’t there, but all we did was think of you.”
When the girls’ attention turned to boys in their teenage years, Debbie recalls that Leslie had “way more boyfriends than I did. I was the shy girl.”
“I only had a couple actually,” notes Leslie.
Their letters often talked about “how cute the boys were.”
“And you haven’t stopped,” Debbie teasingly reminds her pen pal. “You still call boys cute, and doctors cute …”
When Jeff Kribell, Debbie’s husband, came into the picture, Leslie said her friend “kept him a secret for a while.”
“She (Leslie) came right along with the relationship – my family and my pen pal,” Debbie said through laughter. “By the way, I have baggage. Her name is Leslie and she’s from Maine.”
As the years passed, Debbie shared thoughts on the births of her four children and Leslie poured out her feelings when her father passed away.
“The life moments, more than anything, because you’re family at this point,” Debbie says. “When I say ‘Leslie” to anybody in my family, they know who I’m talking about.”
The pen pals met face to face for the first time in 1994. They were in their 30s and both women recalled being “nervous and excited.”
“I was a lot skinnier back then, too,” Leslie tosses in.
“I was, too,” Debbie confirms.
In the years to follow, their paths would cross six or seven more times. Until last week when Leslie made a five-day stop in Brandon, the last time was three years ago.
Their careers also took them down different paths. Debbie works in the radio industry, and for the past 26 years, has worked out of her home.
“I worked out of my home pre-internet,” she informs.
Leslie drove truck for 29 years alongside her husband, Bob, who sadly passed away in January from a traumatic brain injury that exasperated to Alzheimer’s.
“That was tough,” Leslie confides. “It made me grow up even more.”
It was also a moment in life the two shared over a near three-hour phone conversation.
“I called her and said, ‘Are you sitting down? I just wanted to let you know that Bob passed away on January …, and I couldn’t finish Jan. 7. I just burst into tears right then and there,” Leslie tells.
“It was probably a week after Bob died and I bet we talked until 2 o’clock in the morning and that we talked for two or three hours. We were crying, we were laughing, and when I got done, there was Kleenex halfways across the bed. It was a good heart to heart,” Debbie said. “We just kind of lean on each other’s shoulders. I know she’s got my back and knows that I have hers.”
Just then, Debbie’s husband, Jeff walks into the room.
“We want the Kleenex’s please,” Debbie says.
As a “well-trained” husband, he brings them the box.
As their tears are replaced by laughter, Jeff adds, “I just step back and let them have their fun.”
“You have to,” Leslie says.
“It’s two against one,” Jeff answers.
With multiple miles between them, the two agree they’ve rarely had an argument.
“We could’ve yesterday because you were going to split that last donut hole,” Debbie reminds. “Don’t you feel like there is unconditional love between us?”
Leslie nods, “Oh, definitely.”
Debbie also recalls a time when she was “reprimanded” by Leslie.
“I would send her a picture of a porpoise or something like that, something Maine-wise. And she says, ‘I live here. I don’t want any more of this stuff. What I want is South Dakota stuff.’ That’s probably the only time,” Debbie said.
The two have exchanged a plethora of trinkets over the years, which Debbie has displayed in a main floor bedroom at her rural Brandon home.
“We call it the ‘Maine Room.’ Everybody thinks it’s on my main floor, but it’s really my ‘Maine Room’, because that’s where I put all this stuff,” she explains.
Leslie doesn’t have a room dedicated to her South Dakota trinkets.
“I live in an RV,” she said, “but I do have a trivet that belonged to my mom in the shape of Maine … it hangs on one side in my kitchen, and on the other side I have a South Dakota trivet that she sent me, and I really treasure those two. Sometimes you wish that Maine and South Dakota could be right next door to each other.”
The pen pals both say they would never have imagined their friendship that started through a fourth-grade writing assignment would have spanned 49 years and counting.
“I don’t think at 25 we would’ve thought it,” Debbie says.
“We need to celebrate the 50th, though,” Leslie answers.
“I’m giving you a warning,” Leslie tells Jeff.
“I’ve been notified,” Jeff assures.
