FULTON, Mo. -- Nearly 70 years later, World War II veteran Richard White can still picture the letters that came from his wife during his service.
"The letter was always sealed with her lipstick kiss on the back of it," the Fulton resident said Thursday.
White was one of dozens from the area to tour the traveling Smithsonian Exhibit "Mail Call" at the National Churchill Museum. The veterans trip was organized by the Central Missouri Honor Flight and Central Missouri Postal Customer Council.
The exhibit shows the history of correspondence from those at home to those serving during war or conflict from Revolutionary War days to modern times.
Some attendees said it spurred memories as they recollected sending and receiving mail while deployed. Serving in the Navy from 1944-46, White said he would receive a dozen letters at a time, mostly from his wife and sometimes from his mother and sister, because it was difficult for mail to find its way to the constantly-roving ship.
Bill Wolff of Columbia was impressed with the exhibit and said he learned a few things.
"It's amazing. I would not have imagined something like that," Wolff said, gesturing to a photo of Marines carrying a load of mail almost as large as themselves on their backs during the Korean War.
Wolff, an Army Korean War veteran, said his brother's job was to deliver the mail to a dry-docked ship "and supply the ship with ice cream" - which he noted was an important job.
Korean War veteran Harold "Smitty" Smith lives in Columbia now, but still calls Clarksburg home. He recalled sending 341 letters home to Moniteau County.
"Sometimes it only said, "It's raining today,'" Smith said.
He said his mother saved them all. They were eventually stored in buckets in the smokehouse until his father died and the farm was sold in 1969. But Smith and his brother had to wait until winter to retrieve the buckets because wasps had overrun the smokehouse. The letters were in storage at his brother's home for until 2003. When planning a trip to Korea, Smith re-read the letters he had sent to his parents.
"I knew what hill I was on," Smith said, noting the letters jogged his memory of the landscape.
The Moniteau County Historical Society helped him archive copies of his letters in a book and the originals are currently stored at the state archives.
Air Force veteran Bill Hobbs said he enjoyed the exhibit, finding Civil War and World War I mail history interesting. The Korean War vet said he usually wrote to his parents about where he had traveled for the weekend, restaurants he had eaten in and sometimes about a girl he met.
Following tours of the exhibit, veterans and volunteers gathered in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury for the unveiling of the U.S. Postal Service's Korean War Medal of Honor stamps for the Army and Navy, now available for purchase.
In his remarks introducing the speakers for the event, Westminster College President Barney Forsythe reminisced about his own mail call experiences in the Army. He would email home daily from Afghanistan in 2003, but said it was physically getting a package in the mail that was the most exciting correspondence.