When Meghan Coomes’ grandparents first met at a park in Louisville, Ky., they didn’t have any idea that the very glue of their impending romance would inspire a line of jewelry.
But it did, and their granddaughter Meghan Coomes now operates a successful jewelry business born of their devotion.
A bracelet by Meghan Coomes, made from old World War II love letters written by her grandparents.
Anges Stevens met and fell in love with Thomas Coomes in her senior year of high school, just before he was drafted into the military and deployed to fight in World War II in 1942.
Separated, the two kept in touch via letter writing, as many couples and families did at the time.
But it wasn’t the once- or twice-a-week letters that some may expect from lovers kept apart by war. Agnes and Thomas wrote each other every day for three years, three months and four days.
Because military mail at the time was pre-scanned to check for sensitive information, the two came up with a secret code for sharing. Still madly in love despite the distance, the couple at once point attempted to arrange a meeting via letters to elope, but the war ended shortly after the plan was formed, and they married when Thomas returned home in 1945.
As time passed, Agnes and Thomas raised a family, from children to grandchildren.
“We always knew about the letters, they were kept in a bag. We always said we would sit and read them before my grandfather died, but he passed away in 1998, and some of the letters ended up getting thrown away,” Meghan remembers.
But it was far from the end of the road for these transcontinental letters.
About two years ago, Meghan came up with the idea to create jewelry from different snippets of the letters (using copies, although she has utilized a few original fragments), using glass, gemstones and wire to create necklaces, earrings, rings, cufflinks and bracelets.
Forever Yours, Anges rings; $55.
The hobby started its transition into a business venture for Meghan one summer on an island.
“I was living on Nantucket and made friends with a woman who owned a vintage boutique and loved vintage jewelry. I asked her if she wanted to sell my jewelry, and that’s how it began there, in the summer of 2011,” she said. “It grew from there--I made a website, and got a few news stories.”
Branding the line Forever Yours, Agnes, Meghan soon saw customers. The style and sentimental nature of her pieces soon brought customers who
“A burgeoning aspect is now I take other people’s handwritten items--recipes, signatures of people who have passed away, notes, Dear Santa letters--and turn them into wearable art,” she said.
Jewelry-making was and still is a side project for Meghan, who has a career in the television industry. But the fulfillment she gets from working with the artifacts of her grandparents’ love is crystal clear when speaking with her.
“They both wrote extremely poetically, spoke eloquently, and so much of it is wild. It’s like you’re sitting there reading their thoughts. Some of the letters are 15 pages long.
“On New Year’s Eve in 1943, my grandmother wrote, ‘Dearest, in less than three hours we’ll be beginning a new year and we didn’t see each other this entire year.’ She wrote him again when the bells were ringing at midnight,” Meghan recalls.
Another time, Agnes visited Fort Knox, down the road from her house. She would write to Thomas about how she would visit and have fun, but not as much fun as she could have with him there.
“She had a steadfast commitment to him, for no other reason than being in love with him,” Meghan said.
When it comes to making the jewelry, Meghan said she used to pinpoint certain written words to include--Fort Knox or “Tootsie,” their pet name for each other--or take a postage stamp from a letter and incorporate that. Now, she said, just having a piece of a letter in the jewelry makes it special, unless she has a specific design in mind.
How Coomes’ jewelry is an exact replica of the letters; a necklace is pictured here. Necklaces are $115.
“It’s cool seeing my grandmother’s handwriting and how it hasn’t changed a single bit in all these years. Having my grandmother around for it all, when she’s gone, it’s going to be different,” Meghan said.
