Blogging the past, one letter at a time ? Oak Park & River Forest ...

In many ways, Trudel Adler?s blog seems typical. She gripes about the weather, discusses her burgeoning romance with a local attorney and keeps her family updated on the latest news from Chicago.

But Trudel?s Truth also touches on topics that are downright vintage for today?s web readers: working at the World?s Fair along Chicago?s lakefront in 1934 and dining out in a restaurant for the bargain price of 35 cents a plate.

Adler, who immigrated to Chicago in 1934, died in 2007. The blog that bears her name, which began in May, is based on letters she sent to family members in Germany starting soon after she arrived in Chicago.

The family kept those letters ? nearly 300 handwritten pages ? and now the writer?s son is posting them online, one letter at a time, corresponding to the exact date she sent them ? nearly 80 years later.

Trudel?s Truth began with a letter written aboard a steamship bound for the United States. Her son, Leonard Grossman of River Forest, said he has enough letters to continue for several years.

?This is a labor of love,? Grossman said. ?She?s keeping me quite busy.?

In Adler?s third letter home, on May 17, 1934, she asked her family to hold onto her letters ?since I am too busy to keep a diary.? They did, and she eventually recovered the letters and translated them into English. Trudel died in 2007, and she entrusted the letters to Grossman.

When he decided to share Trudel?s Truth with readers around the world, Grossman knew he wanted to use a blog instead of publishing an old-fashioned book. He?s been involved with computers since the early days of the Internet, and has maintained his own website continuously since 1995.

?A book requires a lot more specific information, (and) I would have had to do a lot of research,? Grossman said. A tag line on the site describes it as ?a blog from the past.?

Grossman?s decision to blog opened up this small facet of Chicago?s history to a much greater audience, said Peter Alter, an archivist with the Chicago History Museum specializing in immigration history.

?Immigration is often a topic of research, and the first place you?re going to look is online,? Alter said. ?For this gentleman to be blogging about real letters is just wonderful.?

Each entry sparkles with detail about Depression-era Chicago. Adler, who was middle-class and Jewish, was fortunate enough to have family in Chicago to help her get started in the city. In her letters home, she describes her delight at taking evening strolls along the lakefront, and she recounts getting to know her working-class neighbors, despite her limited command of English. She sold candy at the World?s Fair, where she pretended to be French because that made her seem more exotic to fair attendees.

The project requires a bit of detective work on the part of Grossman. Some letters feature notations written in the margins, and others have English translations that weren?t completely accurate.

Grossman is approaching the one-year anniversary of the project this May, but the real gems are yet to be published. Contained in Adler?s communiques is the detailed account of her courtship with Leonard Grossman Sr., who would become her husband. They began dating shortly after her arrival in Chicago.

The elder Grossman was already well-known as a Chicago lawyer. He received 200 Christmas cards in 1934, according to Adler?s letters, including one from then-Mayor Edward J. Kelly. He would go on to become a celebrity for his work as the lawyer in the Radium Dial Corp. case in the late 1930s, advocating on behalf of a group of women workers who had been poisoned by the radioactive chemicals used to make glow-in-the-dark watch faces. The saga of the Radium Girls came to the stage in Chicago several years ago in the play ?These Shining Lives.?

Grossman said the blog has resonated with history buffs on the web. A handful subscribe to receive regular updates, and regular respondents chime in with comments or personal emails. In addition to the letters, Grossman is building an online gallery of black-and-white photos from Adler?s many photo albums.

Grossman?s approach to the project follows the same advice the Chicago History Museum gives nowadays, said Alter, noting that museums aren?t always the best place for every bit of archival material.

?Often these kinds of groups of letters have much more meaning within the context of the family,? Alter said. ?I think it adds to the breadth and depth of material available online, and it adds something beyond Wikipedia.?

While there?s no way to know what Adler would think of the attention her decades-old letters are receiving from a readers in 2012, Grossman thinks he knows the answer.

?She was always a fascinating, charming, amazingly well-liked woman,? Grossman said. ?She wasn?t a publicity hound, but she loved attention.?

prollens@tribune.com

Source: http://triblocal.com/oak-park-river-forest/2012/02/27/blogging-the-past-one-letter-at-a-time/

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