Do it with your eyes open

Open mailbox to the whole world with pen pals

By GLENNA WILSON
Kansas Senior Press Service
Bnet

Here's a hobby that can bring the world to your mail box --- and I don't mean more catalogs. Add pen pals to your life.

Mavis Bestvater, 77, of Peabody, thoroughly enjoys this hobby. "A pen pal's letter is an invitation into someone's else's life," she says. Every day she's eager for the mail, because letters come from near and far.

Bestvater writes more than 900 letters a year. She currently has 150 to 200 pen pals. She writes to people in nearly every state of the union and in several foreign countries.

One source of potential pals is the American Pen Pal Society, 3 Cedar St., Fair Haven, VT, 05743. For an overseas pen pal, write to International Pen Friends, F, 5 Appian Way, Allston, MA 02134.

Bestvater writes to people in Belgium, Thailand, Romania, Australia, Israel and Canada.

"You are never lonely when you have a pen friend waiting to visit with you in your mailbox," she says. "You don't have to feed them, entertain, do last-minute cleaning, or put up with their children. After a few months, my pen pals are like members of my own family."

She has written to pen pals for 15 years, and she says the new has never worn off. In 1985, Chuck Colson asked on TV for volunteers to write to prisoners. She accepted the challenge and asked for five names.

Some offensive letters came, but she wrote back, telling the prisoners that she was old enough to be their mother or grandmother - -- and that she is a Christian and doesn't appreciate vulgar language. "Not many of them wrote back, but others did." Sometimes prisoners send their mothers' names to her, and she writes to them, too.

Prisoner pen pals is its own special category, not at all like writing to an ordinary person in another state or country. Having a pen pal certainly may benefit an incarcerated person. "It's important for prisoners to remain connected to the outside world, and so pen pals can be helpful to them," says Bill Rich, a law professor at Washburn University. "But if you do this, do it with your eyes open," he says.

Rich cites possible abuses. Some of those in prison have a history of distortion or fraud and may prey on people for money or favors. But he adds, "considering the value to the prisoner of a contact with the outside world, a cautious relationship may be appropriate."

Bestvater has found prisoners to be a fulfilling mission for her, but doesn't recommend it for everyone. She does make a final suggestion for someone writing to non-prisoners: Write to people similar in age to yourself, she says. "We oldsters get along better in our own age group. A shepherd in Arkansas and a couple of others are the only pen pals I have who are older than I am, but every one is priceless to me."

If anyone has questions or would like names and addresses from her, she says to send mail to Mavis Bestvater, Peabody, 66866. You'll get an answer.

- Sources:
American Pen Pal Society
3 Cedar St., Fair Haven, VT, 05743
International Pen Friends
F, 5 Appian Way, Allston, MA 02134
See PEN PALS, page 3
Pen pals
Peabody woman shares lives from Thailand to Romania.