Selected Letters

The writings included in the Selected Letters section were found in David Byrd’s Sidney Center, NY, home after his death in 2013. Many of the “letters” included here are drafts for a final letter. Often, there are two or three copies, with slight changes as he worked out an idea. The writings include childhood and family-related letters, letters to bottle collectors that Byrd met at local auctions and bottle shows, complaint letters to area businesses, and health care-related correspondence.

Two women, Aunt Emily Thomas, Byrd’s mother’s sister, and his sister Mary Byrd, were his main confidants. He wrote that he preferred writing a letter to a phone call. With these two women, Byrd shares his philosophy and humor on a variety of subjects, including the ins and outs of his daily existence as an elderly man living alone and his struggle to build the Pine Swamp home. Also, he shares brief glimmers of what he is creating in the home—the paintings and his book. Byrd kept this secret from almost everyone else.

Late in life, Byrd writes to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Montrose and to a variety of publishers, as he desperately hopes to arouse interest in his book, Montrose VA 1958–88. He mails faded Xerox copies and even takes the book to Cornell Publishing, to no avail.

Byrd’s writings unravel some of the mystery around this reclusive man and fill in integral pieces of his life. 

If you are interested in reading more of David Byrd’s letter, please contact Jody Isaacson or Jessica Farrell at [email protected].