Carol D. Behrend Bahr was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1931. While in the second grade, her family moved to nearby Hartland, Wisconsin and she attended local schools there. During World War II, she decided that she wanted to do something for the men and women serving overseas in the military. In 1944, at the age of thirteen, she wrote a letter to the Stars and Stripes, the overseas military newspaper, expressing her support and requesting a pen pal. She received roughly 1,500 responses from soldiers and sailors in the European Theater. Bahr sent one mass response in the form of a Christmas letter and afterwards corresponded with the several pen pals who wrote her letters back. Some of the correspondence continued after the war ended, and Behrend continued to exchange Christmas cards with some soldiers (and, later, their widows) for decades after the war.
