St. Ann School · Gloucester, Massachusetts · 1967

The Gloucester Letters

A fourth grade class wrote to a wounded Navy corpsman they had never met. He kept every letter for the rest of his life.

As featured on NBC10 Boston and in the Gloucester Daily Times

See the letters Leave a note The story

In the news

As seen on NBC10 Boston and in the Gloucester Daily Times

NBC10 BostonVeterans Day 2026, reported by Oscar Margain. Read the story ↗

Gloucester Daily Times"A little kindness from St. Ann fourth graders buoyed a wounded corpsman" ↗

In their own words

What ten year olds wrote to a wounded corpsman

Cut from the original letters, with the words typed underneath. Swipe for more, and tap one to read the whole letter.

Sister Roselle's fourth grade class

Find a name or a face

33 letters. 1 letter wasn't signed. A [?] marks handwriting that's difficult to read.

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Found so far

Accounted for

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Notes for the class

Leave a few kind words

No notes yet. Write to the class, to Sister Roselle, or about Russell. I read every note before it goes up.

Were you in Sister Roselle's class?

If you wrote one of these letters, knew one of these kids, or remember St. Ann School in 1967, I'd love to hear from you.

Their teacher

Sister Roselle, now Sister Mary Flatley

Reconnected

The kids knew her as Sister Roselle. Today she goes by Sister Mary Flatley. In August 2026, two of her former students helped me find her, and I talked with her by FaceTime.

If she was your teacher, or these letters mean something to you, you can leave her a note. I'll pass your note along to her and share it here too. New notes can take a few hours to show up.

About the letters

The story behind them

Hill 861
March 16, 1967

A corpsman on a fire-swept trail

My dad, Russell Jacobson, was a 20 year old Navy corpsman with the Marines. On Hill 861 near Khe Sanh, he was hit more than a dozen times pulling wounded Marines off a fire-swept trail.

Chelsea Naval Hospital
1967

Then the letters came

He nearly died several times. He lost a lot of weight, struggled to eat, and pulled away from people. Then a fourth grade class in Gloucester he had never met sent him jokes, school news, prayers and their friendship.

Newspaper clipping, 1967: Russell H. Jacobson in a hospital bed at Chelsea Naval Hospital, under the headline Sailor Survives Ambush. — Dad at Chelsea Naval Hospital, where the children's letters reached him. Tap to enlarge.

The red TWA bag

He held on to them like gold

Dad rarely talked about Vietnam. But he kept every one of these letters in a red TWA carry on bag that went everywhere our family went.

August
2026

I found their teacher

She taught the class as Sister Roselle and now goes by Sister Mary Flatley. Two of her former students helped me find her, and I talked with her by FaceTime.

Gloucester
2026

Finding the kids who wrote them

The kids who wrote them are in their late 60s now. I'm finding them, sharing high-quality scans of their letters, and letting them know what their kindness meant to a wounded corpsman and his family.

From Russell's son

What your letters meant to me

I remember seeing these letters once as a young boy, probably about the same age as the children who wrote them.

Vietnam was something we couldn’t really talk about at home. I could see what the war had done to my dad, but I didn’t know what to do with my anger and confusion about what had happened to him. It was hard to understand how so much could have happened to him and so little could be said about it.

Reading your letters brought me comfort. Here were children about my age calling him a friend and wishing him well. Their words showed me that people outside our family had noticed and cared about my dad.

If you wrote one of these letters, I want you to know that years after you sent it, your words brought comfort to his son, too.

Dave JacobsonRussell's son

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Help me find them

Know someone from Sister Roselle's class? Share this with them.