Yale Law School
Sunday Dec. 7, 1941
Dear Mother,
It’s here at last – all our vague hopes of my being able to stay out are gone; I feel sure I will be called by summer, though not before the end of the semester, certainly. I still refuse to volunteer, though there are some boys here who are going to.
It’s hard on you girls, I know; the delay in my education can do none of us any good. I wish I could be there just to talk it over with you. Needless to say, it leaves me very low – I had been hoping against hope that it would never come; it may well mean the end of much of the world that we knew. But there’s nothing we can do about it now.
My love to you both,
Phil
The Woods were a very close-knit family. The death of Philip Wood Senior in March of 1940 had been a devastating blow; partly because of his age - he was only forty four - and its suddenness. He had traveled to Hollywood to prepare for his second film role (Simon Stimson in Our Town) and had been stricken by a heart attack. His son, then 19 and an undergraduate at Swarthmore, became the man of the family.
The Wood family in 1938. Phil Senior and Phil Junior are in back; cousin Kitsy, mother Margretta and sister Gretchen are in the front.
Gretchen and Phil, ages and date unknown.
Phil in 1936, age 16.
At age 18, in Vineyard Haven.
Younger sister Gretchen Wood, 1938.
Margetta Wood (Mother) moved to lodgings near the Swarthmore campus to be near her two children. After Phil was accepted to Yale's prestigious Law School, she and daughter Gretchen took up residence at 120 East 19th Street in Manhattan. As a Marine, Phil directed his correspondence to this address.
Margretta and Gretchen Wood occupied an apartment on the third floor of this building.
Though his father and uncle had served in France during the First World War, Phil Wood considered himself a pacifist, if not an outright conscientious objector. However, he was intelligent enough to realize that there was no possible way for him to stay out personally - the moral, social, and historical implications were too great. This note was the last message that the "Dear Girls" would receive for nearly three months.