16 Jun 1932
Benjamin Griffin to son John Griffin / Ogden, Utah
Dear John:
I received your air mail letter this afternoon and wired you "Don't
come - Am writing you details - all is well."
Am very sorry that you feel so badly yet I knew it could not be
otherwise for you - Dorothy has been the only girl you have ever cared
for and she had declared to you that she really cared for you. It is
surely a problem to solve, the sudden change. Mother thinks it has
been just her mother that has kept her going with you and that she
really meant it when she told mother last Saturday that she did not
love you. Somehow I look at things just a little different than some
others, maybe I am more lenient, look through things more, always
trying to figure out the whys and wherefores of things. As I see it
there are a lot of things that have brought this about. She has worked
very hard at school - has always been thin and frail, easily excitable
and high strung.
Getting all ready to leave home for maybe years and
then having showers and parties almost continuously for ten days - her
family almost in poverty and could not give her any parties or present
- then getting definite word that the American Can Co. are quitting
Ogden and Bill may lose his job - some of her friends constantly
telling her to forget you and trying to lead her to do things that they
do - was all too much for her. And then she maybe figured you were not
going to be patient with her and that she better forget it all now
rather than have trouble later. I can't believe what she told mother.
I figure she painted just as dark a picture to mother as she could for
a purpose, knowing it would go to you. I don't mean that she did not
tell mother what she says she did but she had an object in mind in
doing so. I can't believe a girl could go on with a boy for five or
six years and not care for him. He had decided that she could not go
back and leave her folks under the circumstances that are or that she
could not make good and it would be best for you if she could make you
believe she did not care and was not really your type. She may be
doing it for revenge for what you said in your letter. As I have told
you many times before, you cannot deal with women as you would with men
or get them to see much of your side of the argument and unless you are
willing to give more than half way it is useless to start anything.
Well those are my ideas and they may be as far wrong as the noon and I
know mother feels I should not think them for a minute, so it is best
not to say much about them in your letters.
Dorothy is not ill, of course she has not felt the best but she has not
been right down. After talking to mother Saturday she went to Salt
Lake with her mother and did -Don and Elsie saw here out in her Aunt's
car the other day and she and her mother are in Salt Lake today. I
understand she is planning on going to Los Angeles to summer school
next week. Time alone will tell just how things will turn out -
whether this is just another lesson to you and her or whether you and
she are being saved from future torture. There is something more than
human power working in this affair. All is well that ends well.
John don't weaken under this but just go forward and do the things you
know are right and I am sure it will be for the best good. Be honest,
be hopeful, be prayerful, and the fight will come out for the right.
Remember we are all praying and caring for you. Your father, Ben
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