The closest Grace came to the hoped-for post in journalism was a secretarial job in the publishing branch of the Presbyterian Church administrative offices in Louisville. As her daughter, as a lifelong journalist, I yearn to know more about her search; I never heard her talk about it. (How many of us heard about our mother’s early yearnings, I wonder?)

Within a year, she became engaged to my father, James Arthur Overholser (“Jimmy, she calls him below”), who was completing his graduate work at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Thinking about this new future, she typed a note to herself:

“There are certain things in my life which I want to do. I want to keep up with progress and development in the movies and on the stage….Friends are necessary to my happiness, and I want to cultivate the attitude of constantly being on the lookout for new friends…Letter writing has always been a joy to me, but somehow I have always exercised my talent for procrastination more directly in this line than in any other. If I find myself relapsing into it again, I hope I can have enough common sense and some of Daddy’s ‘horse sense’ to cut down the number of people to whom I am writing so that I won’t be inclined to ‘put-offness.’”

When she moves to her expectations for the deepening relationship with Jim, she soars. So high were her hopes for mutual personal growth. So determined she was that “material hindrances” should not dominate their lives. So confident in the prospect of seeing these things come true.

What I’d give to have Dad’s letters in response. No one, apparently, kept them.

“I want my correspondence with Jimmy to be one of the most productive and inspirational things I can find. I don’t know what sort of letters he is likely to write, but I know what I want to do and I shall not hesitate to express to him my wishes and desires. He is a source of challenge and help to me and I want him to know when he has helped me. Today, the day after he left for his church in Smyrna, the thought came to me as I sat at my desk in the window that our correspondence could be one of the dearest things we could ever experience. Even though we hate to be separated, if we can keep in mind personal development of ourselves, with the ultimate purpose of future development together — the more satisfying and happy because of what we have accomplished apart — then I think we have no need to worry about our lives together.

“It isn’t necessary to be thinking of the actual material hindrances all the time; why can’t we let this period be dominated by a desire to work and read and cultivate and develop something into our lives which will be the means of furthering our happiness later? I like to think of preparing myself for something big that is to come in my life; certainly I wouldn’t attempt to make a speech or write a book — a small book! — without long and intensive and adequate and thorough preparation — therefore, why should we want to rush into something which could be all the fuller and happier if we had fitted ourselves for it? We have just begun to know each other. I think he is in sympathy with these attitudes and wishes of mine which may have a tendency to lean toward the idealistic, yet I think I am practical enough to realize where idealism must stop and let realism come in to guide things — and because of his complete, I hope, understanding, he will want to develop himself to fit his own life for a greater life with another.”

Looking back over the three decades of their marriage, reading this makes me sad.

In the note, she returns to her hopes for her own growth — specific indeed. “I want to read a newspaper daily. I also like to hear the news broadcasts. Books I must choose more carefully, and I must read at least one each month, varying them to include novels, philosophy, science, biography, poems, drama and history.” She vows to exercise daily, keep flowers in her room and “be on the lookout for beauty in the street, in the windows, in the park, and wherever I go; and when I think of the moon it will be so easy for me to think of its beauty when Jimmy and I saw it together.

“I will spend only enough money to keep me up and up and not buy anything just because I happen to want it very much. When I go home Mother and Daddy will need that money to help pay for the wedding expenses.

“I want to regain the feeling I had begun to have that spiritual development is necessary in a full, productive life. I don’t want to consider it a duty and an obligation; rather, I want to do it because of its intense meaning and inspiration in my life. I want to rely on God’s help in directing my life, and if I don’t depend on Him, I can’t expect Him to see my needs and wishes.

“These are the things I want in my life — personal development along the above lines. If I carry out my aims, I should be a Grace McSpadden I can be proud of.”

But there was one more thing she needed to take care of: “I must work out and clearly understand my feelings for Bill, and I must explain everything to him so that he will understand our relation to each other. I need help and strength to do this.

Bill? Who was Bill?