Page 62 - Always Virginia

50 Virginia Day Fritscher

into the small lock on the back cover. The lock has a tiny key hole
and the key is long gone. The locking leather strap was torn and
the key lost during the tumultuous time of the writing of this diary
when competing boyfriends, who knew of the diary, struggled to
read it, and sometimes tore out pages that for the most part were
glued back into place.
Written with a refillable fountain pen in indelible ink, the
handwriting is neat, legible, and sometimes features shorthand for
privacy. Each white page, now creamy yellow with age, is printed
with a day’s date at the top (January 1 to December 31) and five
entries for five years down the left side of each page. Each entry
space for each year is three light-blue lines, fifteen to a page, with
six red lines, each separating one year’s entry from the next.
To read the Five-Year Diary chronologically means turning
through it front to back five times as each page, like the page
for December 25, for instance, has five sections allotted for five
Christmases, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937—although entries were
made only from July 12, 1933 to December 31, 1936. The diary
covers Virginia Claire Day’s life: 1) immediately before meeting
George Fritscher; 2) the meeting of George Fritscher when she was
sixteen and he was nineteen; and 3) the first fourteen months of
their courtship.
In every instance, the printed text is an exact replica of the
handwritten original’s abbreviations, spelling, and punctuation.
—Jack Fritscher

Handwritten inside the front cover:

Age 14, Virginia C. Day, 217 Kentucky St.,
Jacksonville, Ill.
Given to me July 12th on my 14th birthday by
Grace Rogers, 515 S. Church St.,
Jacksonville, Illinois,
my best friend.