Pen Pals After 31 Years Of Countless Letters Sent Back And Forth, Two Friends Finally Meet

The letter from Moor Green Farm landed in Sharon Kratofil’s mailbox one June day in 1966.

That was the year the Spokane fourth-grader broke her arm climbing trees. A shy 10-year-old growing up in the Shadle neighborhood, she loved to dress her cats in doll clothes, play trapeze artist on the monkey bars and read mysteries.

“Dear Sharon,” wrote her new pen pal, Diane Clements, a 10-year-old living in an English farmhouse 6,000 miles away. “I am 5 feet high and I have long dark brown hair. I have a dog named Tessa.”

Thus began a correspondence that has lasted 31 years. This friendship sailed through teen crushes, marriage and motherhood; it weathered difficult passages and countless ordinary sunny days. Eight days ago, it culminated in a meeting between the British girl and the American girl, both long ago turned women.

“It was,” said Diane Clements Hartnell of Long Buckby, England, “the fulfillment of a dream.”

The two girls met through the League of Friendship’s pen-pal program. They exchanged the usual childlike letters at first, recitations of the names of their siblings, schoolmates, pets.

But soon they bonded over a shared passion for The Monkees. Friends told Sharon she resembled Mickey Dolenz. Both girls adored Davy Jones.

“When we got into our teens, it was boys, boys, boys,” said Sharon.

As the girls grew up, the letters flew back and forth with tales of dates and school. Then sad news. Diane’s father died of cancer early one morning in 1979. A few hours later, Diane picked up a pen and wrote to Sharon.

Soon they were exchanging descriptions of the men they were dating. Diane met James Hartnell, an engineer with a dry wit and a slight resemblance to Peter Sellers.

Sharon met Bob Mellis, a twinkling-eyed fellow accounting major at Eastern Washington University. Later, they both worked for a Spokane accounting firm.

Both women married in 1980.

“Our lives have really paralleled each other quite closely,” Sharon Mellis said.

Then came the baby years. Sharon’s son Mike was born in 1982.

Nine months later, on March 5, 1983, Diane wrote, “Well, she’s arrived at last. Little Lisa Diane at 6 pounds, 15 ounces, with lots of black hair and a hearty cry! She’s absolutely gorgeous …”

In honor of the new babies, the women phoned each other for the first time. Finally there was a delicate British accent to go with Diane’s letters, Sharon’s warm laughter to match the wide grin in her picture.

Sharon had Justin, then Amanda. Then Diane’s Nicole was born, and then Suzanne.

Each woman had three children, and wrote of their desire to stay at home with them while they were small.

In 1987 Sharon mentioned she’d kept all of Diane’s letters over the years. They’re stored in a pink shoe box, in chronological order, in Sharon’s North Side brick rancher.

On July 9, 1987, Diane wrote, “I was really amazed to learn you’d kept my letters over all these years! It’s quite unnerving in a way - I think I’d dread to read them, although fascinated.”

Diane didn’t save Sharon’s letters. But in 1988, a difficult one arrived. Sharon’s 4-year-old had been diagnosed with leukemia.

“I am absolutely devastated and so very, very sorry for you all,” Diane wrote on July 12, 1988. “What a terrible thing to have to face.”

The letters continued, through the long years of treatment and the happy news of remission. The children grew. The mothers returned to work part time, Sharon as office manager for Pawn I in Spokane, Diane in her husband’s steel fabrication firm.

They wrote of piano lessons and Brownie Scouts, aerobics classes and diets.

Sharon kept saving Diane’s letters and dreaming of a way to save up enough air-miles for a trip to England. She treasured their correspondence.

“I’m really proud of it,” she said. “For one thing, writing letters is a dying art anymore.”

Both women turned 40.

Last summer, on Aug. 8, Diane wrote, “We want to come over at Easter and tour the west coast as well as seeing you. James said we should surprise you, but I said I hadn’t waited 30 years to meet you to have you away for the weekend! I am so looking forward to it. DON’T SAY YOU PLAN TO BE AWAY!”

Sharon planted tulips to bloom when Diane arrived.

Last fall Sharon’s kids took turns saying, in a weary adolescent tone, “Mom, it’s six months away. I can’t believe how excited you are.”

On March 22, the day finally arrived. Sharon had been cleaning house for weeks.

Diane had written, “I don’t expect or want you to put us up. There’s so many of us, and heaven forbid, we may not get on!”

But Sharon wouldn’t hear of it. She remodeled the basement to make extra room. She cleaned and hung Easter decorations. She fussed that spring wasn’t coming fast enough. The tulips weren’t blooming yet.

Her mother scrubbed Sharon’s vinyl floor. Sharon propped painted wood tulips in the planter on her front porch.

Finally, on that springlike Saturday afternoon, the telephone rang. The Hartnells were in Ritzville. They’d arrive soon.

The house smelled of fresh chocolate chip cookies. Sharon arranged platefuls on the dining room table next to a pot of pink azaleas and a pair of wooden Easter bunnies. She ordered the kids to keep the dog outside, asked the boys to please stop listening to the UCLA game.

Bob and Amanda waited in the living room.

“Do you think Mom’s going to have a stroke?” Bob asked with a grin.

Then Sharon, her soft brown hair curled and hair-sprayed, sat in a rocking chair in front of the picture window. She beamed nervously. She rocked faster and faster.

“I hope they like us,” she said, glancing at the cars outside the window.

Soon a white van appeared. “It’s turning,” she said. “It’s slowing down.”

Then she leaped up, “Oh, goody,” she said, the echoes of the 10-year-old pen pal in her voice. “Oh, there she is!”

A dark-haired English woman in a black pantsuit and a sophisticated silk scarf stepped out of the van.

Sharon ran out of the house, past the wooden tulips and down the front walk. She enveloped Diane in a hug. “Oh, you’re beautiful,” she said. “You’re so pretty.”

The American family, actually rather shy as Americans go, clustered around the British family like happy cocker spaniels, grinning, hugging, shaking hands.

The American teenage boys wore wide baggy jeans and backwards caps, their pretty dark-haired sister in jeans and a shy smile.

The blond European daughters were slender and gorgeous, wearing sweaters the color of Easter eggs.

The British family smiled, gracious and a bit wary, like Persian cats. “Lovely,” they said.

Together, the American dog family and the British cat family stepped into Sharon’s beautifully clean living room.

“This is so wonderful,” Sharon said, patting Diane’s back.

Three days later, everyone was sprawled, relaxed and happy in that sunny living room.

“We haven’t had a chance to be reserved,” Diane said. “Everybody has been so open and friendly.”

“It’s infectious,” said her husband, James.

The two families toured Coeur d’Alene, rode a gondola up Silver Mountain and stopped at the outlet mall for four pairs of Levis for the British family. Sharon’s mother invited everyone to a huge brunch, giving the Hartnells their first taste of Jell-O with whipped cream, and the younger British girls visited Amanda’s school.

“If the rest of our holiday is rubbish, with what we’ve already seen in hospitality and friendship, it would be perfect,” said James Hartnell.

“We’ve been treated like royalty,” Diane said.

The couples discovered the two women both hate to cook. Their husbands, 48 and 49, both work long hours in companies that produce steel products; both are color-blind. Even their children behave similarly. The Americans call certain behavior “whining.” The British call it “whinging.”

“If there’s a surprise, it’s that they’re just like us,” said Sharon. “We laugh at the same things. The kids get in trouble just like ours.”

As for the two grown pen pals, they chatted nonstop, in the front seat of the car as they drove and all the way up and down Silver Mountain.

They pored over photos of Diane’s 250-year-old brick house, called The Old Dairy, which is listed on a national historic register. Diane showed photos of her daughter Lisa’s coronation as her school’s Rose Queen.

The two women read through Diane’s old letters and shared their lives in more depth. They talked about the meaning of this long, rewarding friendship.

“I always knew Sharon was there even if she was on the other side of the world,” Diane said.

And now the Mellises hope to plan a trip to Long Buckby themselves.

“I don’t want to leave,” sighed the Hartnell’s eldest daughter. The British family left Wednesday afternoon to drive down the West Coast.

“Now I’ve got another shoe box to fill,” said Diane.

Sharon beamed.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 5 photos (2 color)