EUREKA - When Annette Dyar Sherman starting writing letters to her parents in 1942, she had no idea she was recording history.

Sherman, now 80 and living at Eureka's Maple Lawn Homes, also probably never envisioned anything like the Internet.

Now, Eureka College professors and a student are creating an online database of her correspondence to give historians a picture of how a young single woman lived in the nation's capital during a world war.

"I would have been horrified if I thought they would be used later," said Sherman, a 1941 graduate of Eureka College and a current part-time student. "I didn't write in a fancy way."

Fancy? No.

Fascinating? Almost certainly.

Her letters home to her mother and father in Eureka record the hustle and bustle of Washington, D.C., during World War II. In addition to documenting her social life, Sherman sent home firsthand accounts of speeches and parades for returning war heroes like then-Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt once held a door open for her when they arrived late together at Washington National Cathedral.

"The letters will be of great value to someone doing research like a social historian," said Tony Glass, director of Melick Library at Eureka College.

400 letters to be archived

About 400 letters written from 1942 to 1947 are being collected into a searchable online archive, including images of the letters and reprints of the text. The archive won't be available until the fall, but other collections can be seen at collections.carli.illinois.edu.

Not only does collecting such materials in an archive help historians search for nuggets of history, but it also preserves the original copies in good condition.

"It is a good maintenance measure and a good research measure," explained Eureka College senior Ashlee Brown of Washington.

Brown is completing an internship in which she scans, transcribes and records each of the 400 letters. She has also shared a class with Sherman.

"What is really interesting is how she lived in D.C. and got to see so many things happen," said Brown. "I do think I relate to it more because I know her. But I think I would still be interested in the letters."

The letters would have been lost forever if Sherman's father, Wilmer Dyar, hadn't been a stamp collector.

"I didn't know my parents had kept them, but my father was a stamp collector and he had saved the letters with the stamps," said Sherman.

Her nephew, Eddie Mansfield, also a stamp collector, had been given Wilmer Dyar's collection. He soon offered the letters back to Sherman.

'It was pretty bad scribble'

Eureka history professor Junius Rodriguez heard about the collection from Sherman and recommended the archiving project, even recruiting Brown for the internship.

"I appreciated that Ashlee could read my writing," joked Sherman. "It was pretty bad scribble."

Sherman, having recently graduated college, wanted to join the war effort in some fashion after her brother, Army Air Corps Lt. Gene Dyar, was shot down and listed as missing.

She saw an advertisement for the Signal Corps seeking individuals with strong English skills and any foreign language knowledge. She knew French and a little German.

"It seemed like there was nothing to do but to go," said Sherman.

The letters recount life in a dormitory near Arlington Cemetery, and later an apartment shared with co-workers. The young women would attend social functions such as dances organized by local churches on weekends.

She sent word of the capital's mood after the death of President Roosevelt in 1945. "We all have to admit he was a great man and it is a great loss to all of us at this time," wrote Sherman.

Her mother and father also wrote to her frequently, but Brown regrets that those letters weren't saved.

According to Sherman, she doesn't see any great value now in her letters.

"There is nothing right now, but I think it will be of interest and curiosity later," said Sherman. "I think it is for the future."

Of course, she never suspected that when she was writing.

"When you're young, you're not thinking about when you are 80 years old," said Sherman. "You don't think about the future."