By Ken Cleveland Landmark Correspondent HOLDEN — When Royce Singleton retired, he finally had time to look through copies of letters from World War II. The correspondence between his parents, Becky and Royce Singleton, captured a 13-month span while his father was a Navy fighter pilot in the Pacific theater. “I knew that he fought in World War II, but I did not know anything about his combat experience. Like so many veterans, he never talked to me or my siblings about the war years,” Singleton said. But the letters formed the basis for a book, At Home and at Sea, that showed the life the couple lived separated by distance and war, focused on the servicemen who fought the battles at sea and the families who fought to hold things together at home. “Both were born in 1921,” Singleton said. His father died in 2002 and his mother in 2005. “I’m not sure when I was first aware of the letters. My parents gave them to my sister when they were in their 70s. She gave them to my youngest brother, who made pdf copies and downloaded them to a CD to share. “I did not start reading them in earnest until I retired in 2009. I was inspired to tell their story after reading over 200 letters that they wrote to one another during the war.” A professor emeritus of sociology at the College of the Holy Cross, Singleton has academic publications to his credit, but this is his first book for the mass market. “We have copies of about 500 letters that my parents wrote to one another in the first 20 years of their married life. At first, I planned to use the letters to write a family history. I began by reading letters written in […]