LOWELL, Mich. — James Bruce McMahon was a B-17 pilot from Lowell who served in Europe during WWII.
Bruce wrote hundreds of letters home between 1942 and 1945 and his family has decided to share them in a podcast.
"I didn't realize what a great writer he was," said Bruce's son, Mitch McMahon. "I was very impressed with his writing when he talks about the searchlights penciling through the air."
Partnering with the Lowell Area Historical Museum, the 92.3 FM radio studio inside Lowell High School is where Mitch, his daughter Annie and his sister, Lori, read pages of Bruce's letters.
Here, they've featured Bruce's other children and relatives as guest readers in their podcast "Letters Home."
Bruce's granddaughter, Annie Whitlock, said the idea came after they found her grandfather's handcrafted box in her Aunt Lori's basement.
Inside the box, they found hundreds of his letters still preserved after all these years.
"My first thought was like, well, we have to do something with this," said Whitlock. "We have to preserve this, we have to put them in an archive, we have to get these out so people can see them."
Starting in 1942, the letters include Bruce's correspondence with his loved ones and chronicle his experiences in training, missions over Europe as a B-17 pilot and the letter letting his family know to expect a wire from him, so they can pick him up in Grand Rapids to go home.
"The letters that we've read so far, he's writing back home to mom and dad," said Mitch. "He wants to be kept informed and it's, you know, there he says, 'Don't worry about me. I'm not lonesome.' But the more he says that, the more you think, well, maybe he was a little lonesome."
"I can definitely hear his voice when I read them, which is really unique and sometimes I kind of hear it when my dad reads them, or when my aunts read them," said Whitlock.
Whitlock, alongside her family and family friends, is using the letters to piece together her grandfather's story.
Together, they're telling history through his point of view.
"He references people that we know didn't make it back from the war, but at the time he's writing these, we don't know this, so those always hit me the hardest," said Whitlock.
The family is making new memories with each other through the experience, although Mitch said his father would probably have mixed feelings about being the center of a podcast.
"We're texting more, we're talking about the podcast all the time with relatives. He would really enjoy that," said Mitch.
"Letters Home" can be listened to on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.