Liz Maguire was raised as a regular at flea markets, and one in particular led to her Flea Market Love Letters. As a teen-ager Liz found a box of turn of the (last) century letters. She had already spent the first $20 her mother gave her to keep her flea market occupied, but when she saw these she pleaded for another $5. Her mother, thinking that this would keep her busy reading for a good part of the summer, handed over the extra $5 which turned out to be a gift for more than Liz.
She has been collecting vintage letters ever since, preserving people’s personal correspondence as important pieces of history. These letters document love, steaming passion, war, hopes, dashed plans, WWII political realities and, yes, the hardships of quarantine. Yes, letters about being quarantined. Quarantined in 1918 during a pandemic far deadlier even than the one we face now with coronavirus.
Listen to Liz tell this story of walking into a motherlode of treasure and what the possibilities are. For those of you who read the most complete and compelling history books written today, you know that the riveting and reliable facts have been taken from letters of people who took part long ago in the daily lives that have defined America. Letters in handwriting with specifics that would have been lost without participants detailing moments, moments lived in love and in fear, in joy and in sorrow, in celebration and in grief.
Her instagram account is filled with incomparable photos, and you can also see Liz talking about this at the Newclevelandradio Love Letters Live Youtube. Seeing her energy and joy is a whole other lesson on how important these letters are.
Yes, the letters you write today in 2020 will be tomorrow’s best history. And, when your families, generations down the line, have come to the end of passing down these letters, we can only hope that they end up in the hands of a collector like Liz Maguire who is, today, holding the tender secrets as well as blasts of jubilation of the past (maybe even your own grandparents and greats) close to her heart.
