Bernard Barker's father, Chris Barker, gave him a box of letters a few years before he passed away in 2007.

"It wasn't a very large box," Bernard Barker told Newsweek in an interview. "But it had, in the end, 500 letters."

The box contained the letters to one of many great love stories that began during World War II, between his father and mother, Bessie, between 1943 and 1946.

Letters were the primary way couples separated by the war could communicate. Notes from the era reveal themes of longing and excitement of reunition, Kimberly Guise, senior curator and director for curatorial affairs at the National WWII Museum, told Newsweek.

Barker said his father offered to toss the letters if he wasn't interested.

"He said, 'Do you want to take these letters, or shall I throw them away?'

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