The Letter That Kept Coming Back

In 2019, a retired schoolteacher named Dorothy Chambers in Tupelo, Mississippi, began writing weekly letters to her former students scattered across the country. Not emails — handwritten letters on pale blue stationery, each one specific. She remembered which student loved astronomy, which one struggled with reading, which one lost a parent in fourth grade. "I just need to know you're okay," she wrote at the bottom of every single one.…