Penpals Meet After 43 Years of Letter Writing

After 43 years of exchanging letters, two penpals, one from Newfoundland adn one from Singapore, met in person for the first time this week.

“For decades they’ve been sharing our best times and our worst times together in letters,” said Sonya Clarke casey. “We always signed off saying ‘I hope someday we will meet.’ But it never really felt like we really would.”

Clarke Casey and Michelle Anne Ng connected through a school penpal program in 1983,when they were both in Grade 5.

They started writing to each other – and never stopped.

Sitting together in St. John’s, the two women sift through stacks of letters they’ve kept for decades: cursive scrawling for pages, carefully selected stationary, envelopes with little notes and drawings.

Clarke Casey laughs, reading from a letter she wrote in 1992: “The weather here is starting to warm up. Today it’s 4 degrees! Do you have a boyfriend now?”

Ng pulls out another letter where she talks about liking the song 99 Luftballoons: “it’s like four pages long!” she laughs, while Clarke Casey remembers how excited she was to get such a lengthy letter.

As kids, they looked forward to each other’s letters, which would take weeks to deliver from across the world.

Ng would share about life in Singapore, sending newspaper clippings about local teen fashion; while clarke Casey wrote from Carbonear, N.L., drawing a map of her local swimming pond.Sonya recalls telling Michelle all about when prince Charles and Diana visited Harbour Grace, and the excitement of seeing them in person.

It was a cultural exchange – and the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

as the letters piled up, the women became closer – writing through university, travels and life changes. Clarke Casey recalls writing to Ng that she was pregnant with her first child.

publication Date: 2025/10/20 13:35:28