Class of ’68
Last week I received a letter in a hand-addressed envelope. Everyone who knows me calls me Doug, but this letter was addressed to J. Douglas Johnson and written in cursive script by a shaky hand. I had never received a letter from this person before, but I correctly surmised its contents even before opening the envelope because I’ve received almost identical letters once or twice a year since I began editing Touchstone, and the envelopes always look the same.
The letters come from retirement homes, and the writers are always about twenty years older than me. I graduated from college in 1988, which means this letter-writer was about twenty years old in 1968.
I am grateful to receive these letters even though my correspondents rarely have kind words for me or our journal. But no matter what the letters say, I have a fond appreciation for anyone who still puts pen to paper (though I long to receive one typed on a Smith Corona).
My correspondents write to tell me that Touchstone is too rigid and too old-fashioned in its points of view, and they’ve had about enough of it. You might wonder why these curmudgeonly letter-writers subscribe to our journal if they don’t like what we have to say. Their reason is always the same.
This most recent letter began, as they always do, with, “One of my younger friends brings her older issues of Touchstone for me to read.” For this I am doubly grateful: first, for the handwritten letter, and second, for the great charity of our subscribers, who bring to mind the men who struggled to lower their dear friend through the open roof.
J. Douglas Johnson is the executive editor of Touchstone and the executive director of the Fellowship of St. James.
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