Since You Went Away1944

Mrs. Anne Hilton:
[journal entry to Tim voice over] I hope you'll think I was right, too, Tim, and that someday you'll be interested in reading this diary. And I hope you won't be too shocked when you hear that I'm actually training for work in a shipyard, of all places. Yes, tremendous changes have taken place in the pampered woman who was your wife. It's hard even for me to realize that I'm studying to be a lady welder. And doing very nicely, so it seems. Oh, Tim, I love it so, and I have such admiration for all these people. There's one woman I can't wait for you to meet. Her name is nothing like anything we ever heard at the country club. It's Zophia Koslowska, and she likes me because she thinks I helped her through a most awful and tragic loneliness.

Zofia Koslowska:
I wish my little boy had lived, so he could have seen America. I used to read to him about it every night when the shades were drawn and the sound of heavy boots marching down the street made my poor little Janka shake until I thought his bones would crack. And then we'd pray together that God would let us go to the fairyland across the sea. If only he could have been with me the day I went, all by myself, to the Statue of Liberty and read what it says there for the whole world to see. Do you know it? Anne Hilton, did you ever read it?

Mrs. Anne Hilton:
No. I'm sorry to say, I don't know it.

Zofia Koslowska:
Oh, I'll never forget it. I know it so well here [points at her head] because I feel it so much here [points at her chest] . It says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door." You've helped light that lamp for me, Anne Hilton.

Mrs. Anne Hilton:
[journal voice over] And then, Tim, she said the most thrilling thing that has ever been said to me. She said ...

Zofia Koslowska:
You are what I thought America was - what I meant when I prayed with little Janka.

Mrs. Anne Hilton:
[journal voice over] And, as in my own small way I help here in the shipyards, I hope I may be worthy of her words, just as each night I pray that always I may be worthy of those other thrilling words... the first time and every time since that you've said, "I love you."