Letters From Iran

About the Book

Having a daughter serving in the Peace Corps, prompted me to publish, Letters from Iran, written forty years ago. The experiences of mine remain relevant today. The complex world with its problems is much like the situation forty years ago.

These letters express the adjustment from being a strange foreigner, to becoming a beloved friend within the sphere of the friends, neighbors and acquaintances made while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Babol, Iran from 1970-1972.

I am now the age my parents were when these letters were written. I am facing retirement and aging and feel gratitude for the example my parents gave me of living vibrantly into old age. Both Mom and Dad lived into their nineties, proof that an active lifestyle maintains quality of life.

Living for twenty five months in Iran changed my life, changed my attitudes about foreigners and deepened my philosophy that people are basically good. Learning the language, the customs, living among the people made this possible.

I am deeply grateful to the friends mentioned in these letters. Contact with the Iranian families was lost within a year. Desire to return for a visit to Iran lingers in my heart. Christmas letters have kept me in touch with the Collins family.

My sisters and I remain close. I married David Gray six weeks after returning to the States on furlough. We are blessed with four children; Mark Irving, Stephanie Ann, Brian Leroy and Timothy Alan. Our home is in Bismarck, North Dakota.

About the Author

Arlene Elle Gray lives in Bismarck, North Dakota in the heart of the North American continent. Since her Peace Corps Volunteer experience outlined in Letters From Iran, she settled into life of wife, homemaker and mother. She and Dave are proud parents of Mark Irving, Stephanie Ann, Brian Leroy and Timothy Alan Gray. Arlene is a music teacher and musician of piano and pipe organ. Her sisters remain her best friends: Karen, retired from kindergarten teaching, lives in Eugene, Oregon, Onneta, a respected piano teacher, lives in Richland, Washington, Alice, a Peace Advocate and Sacred Dance Leader, lives in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. It is a tribute to Grace and Irving their daughters remain married to their original husbands; Karen to Gene, Onneta to Melvin, Alice to Mark and Arlene to Dave. Grace and Irving died in Oregon, within seven months, in 2001. Grace was 91 and Irving had just turned 93. A sense of humor, education and faith in God help balance life’s challenges.