Art on Envelopes

Smithsonian:

Jack Fogarty and John MacDonald served with the Army’s 98th Evacuation Hospital in World War II’s Pacific Theater from 1944 to 1945, where they spent “many an hour sitting around in a jungle clearing,” according to Fogarty, who is now 92 and living in Teaneck, New Jersey. The two soldiers developed a tight friendship as they worked and relaxed together.
Fogarty became close friends, too, with John’s wife, Mary MacDonald, who remained home in Queens, New York. Fogarty had met her before he and John shipped out, and he struck up a correspondence with her that lasted until he and John returned home. An amateur artist, Fogarty illustrated his envelopes to show Mary daily life around the camp—jungle hikes, beach swims, evenings in tents under gaslight.
“My drawings were an expression of love for the MacDonalds,” says Fogarty. “I loved them and they loved me in the best of terms.”
The letters sealed a lifelong friendship between Fogarty and the MacDonald family. Mary MacDonald died in 2003; her husband in 2007.
Meg MacDonald, one of the couple’s four daughters, recently donated 33 illustrated envelopes, eight letters and a watercolor made by Fogarty to the National Postal Museum, which is currently exhibiting them online.

He answers some questions about the illustrations and correspondence at the site, which also features a number of other examples of his envelope art.

Here's David Kotok reviewing some of his father's letters to his mother:

Dad served in the Pacific in WWII. He left when I was three months old and returned after my third birthday. Mom and I lived with my grandparents on the family farm. So did my Aunt Pearl, whose husband was in Europe in the army.
I’ve read the censored letters Dad wrote to Mom. Powerful reading packed with nostalgic moments, these notes had sections cut out by a stranger whose task was to insure that the enemy wouldn’t glean information from them if they were intercepted. I think about US Army censorship of a letter from New Guinea that my father sent to my mother. That letter took many weeks to travel from the place where he wrote it to delivery at the farm.
I also have the flag Mom got as a vet’s widow when Dad died. I just went over to it. I picked it up. I turned it around. I put it back in the place where it sits in my home office.
Nostalgia has triggered some wetting of the eyes and a flood of images in the brain.

There is a permanence that is lost as we've gone from letters to phone calls and texts.  I've come across some of the letters I received from folks in the days before email took over.  They enable me to see what was said long ago, something which is impossible with a phone call.  I'm curious as to how much actual history will be lost because we no longer have such a record.  Memory is a very fickle thing.