Family's chain letter wins them reunion trip

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- The fat manila envelope arrives in Doug Pletcher's mailbox every year, stuffed with letters and photographs from uncles and cousins of some 24 branches of his family tree scattered from Florida to California.

Pletcher of Riverside, Ill., reads through the pile, removes his old letter and writes a new one to bring his relatives up to speed on his marketing work, his two grown children and his softball league.

Then he mails the whole package to the next person in the chain -- a tradition three generations of Pletchers have maintained for 87 years.

"It is a kick to get it," says Pletcher, 53. "Lots of the letters aren't all that riveting -- how the garden's growing and all that. But it's very warm and nice. We're all over the country, and you don't see them very often."

But next week members of the Pletcher clan will get together for a reunion in Savannah, Ga., a meeting that will be a first for some in the youngest generation. Doug Pletcher won a $25,000 reunion trip, sponsored by hot dog maker Hebrew National, by writing an essay about his family's long-lived chain letter swapping.

Close-knit family

The tradition started in 1916 when Erno Pletcher, his four brothers and three sisters began leaving the family dairy farm in Goshen, Ind., to attend college and start families of their own. The siblings would send letters home to their parents, who bundled them for mailing to each of their grown children in turn.

"They were a close-knit family and they wanted to keep in touch, so they started this letter that had a regular pattern," said Jim Pletcher, 83, of Green Valley, Ariz., one of Erno Pletcher's sons and Doug Pletcher's uncle. "As the families grew, that meant the offspring started to get into the act."

The original eight have all since died. The last of the siblings, their sister Opha Pickett, wrote letters for the chain until 1988, when she died at age 100.

For their children, picking up the correspondence habit came easily. The letters were a constant in their lives, said Jim Pletcher, who can recall the bundles arriving as early as 1925, when he was 5.

Unfortunately, none of the early letters was kept, said David Pletcher, a retired history professor. "We should have saved them, of course, if we had any historical idea of the value of a family history," he said.

"You would have to sift through a great deal of material to winnow out all the interesting parts. But it would be something a social historian would take great pleasure in."

Doug Pletcher won the Hebrew National contest, which awarded $25,000 reunions to two winning families, earlier this year after seeing the contest announced in a newspaper advertisement.

He said the money would only cover travel, lodging and other expenses for 22 people. So he and his two children, aged 22 and 23, will meet his uncles Jim Pletcher and Richard Pletcher and their families in Savannah. Doug Pletcher, an only child, is also bringing along a few close friends whom he considers to be like brothers.

Though none of the family lives in Georgia, he picked Savannah because his daughter became enchanted with the city's Victorian homes and oak-shaded squares while visiting for St. Patrick's Day a couple of years ago.

During their stay Thursday through next weekend, they plan to tour the city's historic district, take in a minor league baseball game, play golf and just catch up.

"There have been family reunions," the last being in 1997, Doug Pletcher said. "But not this exotic and in such a cool place. It's a great thing and everybody is so excited about it. Nobody has anything but joy in the fact that I've picked Savannah for it."