About Mattie on the Homefront

Mattie On The Homefront is a podcast about history, family, and Minnesota.

I know that my grandfather, Ken, served during WWII. His uniform hangs in my bedroom closet, and his war photos are in a box next to me in my studio. But I never much thought about Mattie, the mom he left at home during those years. I never thought about her worry, and her fear for him. I never spent any time imagining what her experience of that time might have been.

Mattie died in 1974, before I was born, so, unlike Ken, I never got to meet her. She has always been an older woman in a few photos, just a name on a branch of the family tree.

Until I found the box.

Nestled amongst family photos, carefully packed in chronological order, I discovered several hundred letters. I pulled out the first one, dated September 1, 1942. It starts with:

and is signed:

In letter after letter, all book-ended the same way, are my great-grandmother’s entire correspondence to my grandfather during his time in the U.S. Army - from 1942 to 1945. 

The letters make up a vivid, nearly daily diary of Mattie’s life back on the homefront. It is the portrait of a family, a community, a place, and a time; all in extensive detail and a casual tone. In these letters, I found something precious - a way to discover a past, and a connection with dead relatives, that I never thought I would know.

I knew that I wanted to share these letters with my dad, to experience discovering them together. So, in each episode of Mattie on the Homefront, we read the letters aloud to each other, moving week-by-week through time and learning about our family.

Through these letters, we get to know Mattie - we debate whether she’s funny or sarcastic, or maybe both. We get to meet her friends and see her be a social center in her neighborhood. We share her joys and her interests, and the everyday of her life as she catches a family-record-sized fish at the lake, stays up late with her pastor to decide if she should take over as President of the Ladies’ Aid, and struggles with inferior gas provided by rationing.

And we learn that, in the midst of war, life continues to happen. For those left at home, in between the worry and fear, there are still weddings, funerals, shopping trips, weather events, petty disagreements, jokes, dinner with friends, and trips to the cabin up north. And we’re excited to learn more - part of what’s exciting is discovering it together.

The Team

Me - Hans Buetow - Mattie's great-grandson

Hans is a Peabody Award-winning podcaster who has spent time with American Public Media, Minnesota Public Radio, and The New York Times. He is currently the co-founder, and Senior Producer of Never Post, an independent podcast for and about the internet. He is also the editor of Unravelling, a podcast that looks at the world through the lens of mental health.

My Dad - Steve Buetow - Mattie's grandson

Steve knew Mattie as a grandmother - an older woman in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s. Even though these letters are new to him, revealing a younger woman he never knew, his stories of the characters and places in the letters help paint a vivid picture of Mattie’s world and the people in it.

Start your own thing

Enjoying the experience? Get started for free and set up your very own subscription business using Ghost, the same platform that powers this website.