By CATHY DYSON

A time capsule from the past landed in Polly Jett's lap Wednesday as she reread a love letter her husband sent 68 years earlier, when he was away from home--and his beloved family--during World War II.

Jett, a vibrant 88-year-old, looked at the weather-beaten envelope that had darkened so much with age, the recipient's name was no longer legible.

But when she opened the tan-colored pages of the folded letter and read, "My darling, I hate to be away from you for so darn long," her thoughts went back to June 1944.

That's when her husband, the late Edwin E. Jett Jr., was an Air Corps corporal, serving as a military policeman in China.

The couple had married two years earlier, in 1942, when she was 18 and he was 20. At the time the letter was written, she was living in Fredericksburg with their baby son, Jerry, who was less than a year old.

On the first of four pages, the young airman said he couldn't wait to be reunited with his darling.

"I am going to stay home and hug my sugar all the time," he wrote. "You won't be able to get me to leave the house."

He lived by those words.

"We were married for 68 years," his wife said, "and he was a true Southern gentleman and my best friend."

A LETTER IN THE SNOW

Jett, who ran the Bazzanella Fur Shop in Fredericksburg with her mother and sisters, was more than surprised when The Free Lance-Star called Wednesday morning.

She said she couldn't believe anyone would want to read a story about a letter "between two young people in love."

Kyle Coble, the man who found the letter and sent it the newspaper, thought otherwise.

He lived at 1113 Caroline St. and had been a dentist in the city for 25 years. He was a few doors down from the fur shop and the old brick building behind it, where the Bazzanellas stored furs and company correspondence.

Last winter, the new owner of the building tore down the storage facility. One evening after that, Coble came home and found the letter atop a blanket of snow in his backyard.

He assumed it had blown out of the storage building.