Dr. John G. Neihardt Omaha, Nebraska.
My dear Mr. Neihardt:

The last I heard from you you were setting out for a trip to India; I heard later that you were no longer at Columbia, Mo. and the Dick Cavett show last night was a tremendous thrill. I haven't stayed up for the Dick Cavett show for a long time but my daughter Marcia who is now living here in Tulsa phoned me in the afternoon to be sure and stay up for it last night.

It seems incredible that you are "90 years young" and certainly your performance of last night would have done credit to a man some twenty or thirty years younger. Marcia said this morning "He looks just as I remembered him twenty five or thirty years ago". She too was thrilled by the program. We both applauded your refusal to glorify the past and your insistance that the future is going to be even more interesting.

If you have the time and energy I would dearly love to hear from you and to know what the "children" are doing. I remember Sigurd as a pianist but knew Hilda much better and she was somewhat a favorite of mine.

I am not sure whether I wrote you of my second marriage. Marian died in 1961 and I shared Howard Baldwins home in Springfield until Christmas 1965 when Lillis ( Mrs. Carl Anderson) and I were married. Actually the Andersons and the Cralles had been very close friends since around 1922 though Carl passed away a few months before Marian. It was not a "union of convenience" as both of us were quite comfortably located and neither had contemplated a second marriage- I just got into the habit of going down to Tulsa oftener and we found ourselves very much in love and it was harder and harder to go back to Springfield. It is a beautiful relationship, no man was ever blessed with a more wonderful companion and we have a very lovely little home here. We think we are equally fortunate in our respective children, grandchildren and great grandchildren as well. For once my stupidity caught up with me and a ladder fell with me on December 18 smashing a left hip so I spent the Christmas season in the hospital and I am still using one crutch to get around with.

With our congratulations and our sincere wish that you may retain that intellectual sparkle and memory^[?] the Great Spirit shall call you to join "your relatives, both consanguinous and spiritual.


Walter
Walter O. Cralle.