Brooksville family shares parents' WWII love letters

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A Brooksville family has quite a story to tell: a story of love, service to country and undying devotion.

Jim Bartlett has a treasure trove of love letters his father Albert wrote to his wife Ester while he was overseas during World War II.

"It kind of showed us a different side of our parents that we never knew existed," Bartlett told FOX 13.

The family also has a 78 RPM vinyl album Albert recorded in a record booth right before he went overseas. It was a message to his beloved Ester.

"It was about their future when he got back," says daughter Cathy Sultan. "What they wanted to do and what they hoped to do."

Albert was part of a group of soldiers called the 509th Composite Group. They were shipped to Tinian, an island in the Pacific. 

"It was an isolated squadron that you could put anywhere and they had everything they needed to sustained the squadron, from cooking meals to preparing any of the equipment that they had," Bartlett says.

They were part of a highly secret project. 

"Their only goal was to drop the atomic bomb," Bartlett explains.

They dropped the bomb on Japan and the war soon ended, allowing Albert to return home safely. Ester kept all of their wartime correspondence.

"We realized how important it was to her, their life together," Sultan says.

That life together lasted 52 years until Albert died in 1995. Ester died in 2017. But the couple left behind a legacy of love for future generations of family.