July 11, 1939: Opa's Optimism

Transcription:

Dear Miss Salmon,

I received your letter of June 22nd for which I thank you very much indeed. You can imagine how excited I am about the favourable development of the case. I will immediately begin to take the necessary steps to obtain my visum, and I will let you know at once should I have obtained any results. In the meantime I thank you once again very much and assure you I appreciate tremendously all you have done for me. 

I remain with very best wishes and kindest regards.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Doeppner

I’m impressed. Opa has such a pleasant and optimistic response to learning he is first alternate for Oberlin. I wondered which way his response would go, and here it is: optimism. He is genuinely encouraged by the progress in his case. I imagine that he was delighted to hear that he got close to any school’s top choices, and felt encouraged that it meant he might make it on someone’s acceptance list. Opa’s letter to Gisela just a couple of weeks before this (find it here) was bemoaning the fact that he hadn’t heard of any promising progression on his attempt to go to school in the US. This was progress, even if it wasn’t the final step.

Way to be Opa. He’s reminding me of his eternally optimistic friend Bern Brent from his Quaker youth group. (If you haven’t read about him yet, you must meet this gem, read about him here.)

PS- I wonder if he learned British English instead of American English...
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Opa's niece Helene (Patti's daughter) just wrote me to tell me the answer to my last question:

I know for a fact that my mother learned British English in gymnasium, so am quite sure Tom would have, too.  I think it was only after the war that American English was taught in Europe; before, the Queen's English was much preferred, certainly considered more proper.  Now I think it's a mixture, but often American.