When William Harvey took over the family condo in Kennebunk, Me., following his father’s death, his wife discovered three bound volumes of letters written by Avery Royce Wolfe ’20. Wolfe wrote the letters home during World War I when he was a volunteer ambulance driver with the French Army in the Verdun sector.
Wolfe was the first husband of Harvey’s stepmother, Florence Braightwaite. With the assistance of his son, Eric, a freelance writer, Harvey edited the collection Letters from Verdun: Frontline Experiences of an American Volunteer in World War I France, which was published by Casemate in 2009.
“[Wolfe] was only 18 years old at the time, and he exhibits such physical and emotional maturity for that age,” says Harvey, a physician of nuclear medicine at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.