Pen pals meet after almost 7 decades; as if they had known each other forever

Article content

The marriage of Carol Robert’s sister Mary in 1956 led to a pen-pal friendship that marked a milestone Sunday.

Article content

Robert’s new brother-in-law, Jim Toler of West Virginia, told him that his brother had a daughter named Chyrl who would like to be his pen pal.

Some 68 years after this pen pal friendship began in 1956, Robert met his long-time pen pal, Chyrl Butler, for the first time in person on Sunday in Chatham.

“It’s a great feeling,” Butler said of meeting Robert and his daughter, Chyrl Roelans.

When asked if they felt like they already knew each other, Robert replied: “That’s true. I feel like I’ve known her forever.”

Robert was 11 and Butler was nine when they began corresponding.

They shared their life experiences, especially about children and family.

When asked why she named her daughter Chyrl with the same rare spelling as her pen pal, Robert replied: “At that time, we wrote to each other a lot.

Article content

“I just liked the name and I was like, ‘Chyrl, that’s different,’ so that’s what happened,” she added.

Life seemed to interfere with the various times Robert and Butler had planned to meet over the years.

As life became increasingly busy, correspondence between the two came and went.

However, Roelans saw Butler on Facebook and asked her mother if she was named after him.

So Roelans contacted Butler a few years ago via social media and a reconnection was made.

A friendship formed between Roelans and Butler as they shared the problems they had with Chyrl’s spelling.

“It’s a nightmare with our name, it really is,” Butler laughed.

She listed many names she had been given as well as mispronunciations of her name.

Article content

She said people often insisted on reversing the “r” and “y” in the spelling of her name.

“People would say you don’t have a vowel in your name,” Butler said. “And I’d say yes, ‘AEIOU and sometimes Y. I’m sometimes Y.’”

Roelans said she tells people who question the spelling of her name: “The ‘y’ is in the middle … and they still don’t get it.”

She even has difficulty with spelling in government offices, and has even been told her name is misspelled.

Butler confessed that her mother got the name Chyrl from a story in the old “True Story” magazine.

Now that they were together for the first time, they had planned to visit each other, have dinner together, and catch up. But they didn’t divulge any details.

“We won’t tell you all the personal stuff,” Robert laughed.

Article content