“Every time I saw those letters, just out of the corner of my eye, I kind of had this little nagging feeling that I wanted to do something with them,” said Marilyn Dale, artist of “Between the Lines.”

For 25 years, Naperville artist Marilyn Dale stored over 500 letters that her father, Chester Mackowiak, sent to her mother, Irene Golata, during World War II. Mackowiak was an Army infantryman serving in the Pacific Theater from 1944 to 1945.

The story of Mackowiak and Golata

“While he was there, he started to write letters to my mother, a woman that he had met at a family wedding. In fact, his brother married her sister. They knew each other for six years, probably at family events, but never dated,” said Dale.

Though Mackowiak and Golata were just friends at this time, Dale said her f

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