LETTER WRITERS WRITE FOR DIFFERENT REASONS

Ivan Nothdurft, 81, says he writes letters to the editor when the spirit moves him and he has something to say about moral decency that people need to hear.

"Writing is not a profession," said author Georges Simenon in 1958, "but a vocation of unhappiness."

But for a few of the regular contributors to the Southeast Missourian's Letters-to-the-Editor section, writing does not bring unhappiness but a way to express their deepest thoughts to a wider audience.

For Ivan Nothdurft, 81, of Cape Girardeau writing is a collaborative effort. He types a rough draft of the letters and gives it to his wife, Lorla, whom he calls his editor and secretary.

Lorla Nothdurft then types the letters on her word processor, being careful to check her husband's spelling.

It is a partnership that dates back nearly 57 years from when they were married in April 1941. Together they went to South America for 22 years beginning in 1946 where Ivan Nothdurft, an ordained minister, worked as a missionary for the Methodist Church and then with both the American Bible Society and the British Foreign Bible Society.

When they returned to the United States in the late 1960s, they lived in New York where Nothdurft worked for the American Bible Society for 15 years until his retirement in 1982. They came back to Cape Girardeau, the community in which Nothdurft had been raised and educated.

He started writing letters to the Southeast Missourian in 1995 because, he said, it gives him something to do, but also because it gives him a chance to say something about moral decency he believes people need to hear.

"I write when the spirit moves me," he said.

It is that same sense of the spirit that compels Ron Farrow to send his letters to the editor.

"I'm letting the Lord use me to write," Farrow said.

Farrow, a quality control officer for Larron Laboratory in Cape Girardeau, admits that writing was not always easy for him, saying that when he was in school, English was his worst subject.

"I hated English," he said.

He had never written much of anything except letters to his pastor, which, he was certain, were driving his pastor crazy. Then he bought a copy of the book "Writing Articles from the Heart" by Marjorie Holmes, the woman he considers his mentor.

He took up Holmes' challenge that anyone can write, eventually landing a weekly column in the Van Buren newspaper. Still, he wanted things read in Cape Girardeau, the town in which he has lived all his life.

He decided to write letters to the editor, in part because he was getting frustrated by what he considered the mean-spirited letters he read or the comments that were being voiced through Speak-Out.

"I wanted to convey through my letters that there is a God who loves people. I wanted to tell people that they need not be lonely or fearful," he said.

When he first sent letters to the editor, they weren't getting published. One day, in an alleyway, he said that he told God, "Lord, I really want to write."

He has not stopped writing since.

The ideas for his letters come from a variety of sources. He may read something that touches him in some way. A friend may relate a story that Farrow believes has a good message to tell.

"What is needed is less mean-spiritedness and more of a message of love and kindness," he said.

Donn S. Miller of Tamms, on the other hand, takes pleasure in being a bit of a gadfly.

"For all the preachiness of the political conservative movement, there is a lot of hypocrisy," Miller said. "I delight in pointing it out."

Miller is a retired postal employee who sends most of his letters to the Missourian via the fax machine rather than through the mail because he knows the letters will get to the paper quicker if he uses the fax.

His letters arrive at the paper with a recognizable Latin heading, "Voces Populorum: Epistolae," which means, "Voices of the People: Letters." It is that voice, which he knows may be unpopular, that he wants heard.

"I'm writing in an area of the country that is religious and conservative, and I consider myself neither," he said.

Born and raised in Cairo, Miller moved from Southern Illinois in 1960 when he joined the Army. After a two-year stint, he landed in New York City where he decided that he would try to make it in the city. He worked a variety of odd jobs, including a bangle filer in a bracelet factory, before he began working as a computer programmer for IBM in the late 1960s.

Then, in the mid-1970s, he began working for the postal service. His job with the postal service gave him a tour of the country. He worked in Manhattan, Jersey City, N.J., Miami, Royal Oak, Mich. and Mount Vernon, N.Y.

He returned to Southern Illinois in 1992 when he was retiring from the postal service and his marriage was breaking up.

"I could move to Mexico or Malta, but my mother told me that my grandmother's old house was sitting empty, so I moved there where I could live rent free," he said.

He does not, however, live there alone, but has surrounded himself with five dogs and three cats.

"I like dogs better than people," he said. "There is more character in one dog than in the first 100 saints you pull out of a bag."