Isabell Blocks, 88, who was known locally as “Vietnamom” for her dedicated monthly correspondence to hundreds of local servicemen, died Saturday in Lake Forest Hospital.
A native of Prairie View, in Lake County, Mrs. Blocks gained regional fame in the early 1970s when she won a television contest for her letter-writing campaign to servicemen from the Lake County area. Family members say Mrs. Blocks’ letters, and a cartoon she included from a newspaper, were meant to cheer up homesick servicemen.
Mrs. Blocks began her correspondence after her son, who was serving in Vietnam, wrote to say that several of his comrades did not receive mail. She asked for the names of those soldiers and then, through the Veteran’s Administration, gathered a comprehensive list of Lake County soldiers. She wrote to each of them every month.
“When I got the first letter, I was so surprised because I didn’t know who this lady was,” recalled Mark McMurrough, a Libertyville veteran who served in the Army during the Vietnam War. “I was very touched because it made me feel like somebody was out there thinking about me. She’d tell me about what was going on in Lake County and in the Chicago area and it really made me feel like I had a link to my home.”
Through the contest, Mrs. Blocks won a trip to Vietnam, but when the fighting worsened, the excursion was called off.
Her daughter Beatrice Jost said, “It was one of the greatest regrets of her life because she wanted to go over and show the soldiers who’d she’d written to that she supported them.”
Despite a failed attempt to meet her new friends in Vietnam, Mrs. Blocks was overjoyed when a steady stream of Lake County soldiers returning to the U.S. stopped by her home.
“Even up until the day she died, she was still writing to some of them,” Jost said.
Soldiers were not the only targets of Mrs. Blocks’ dedicated correspondence. She wrote faithfully to friends and family members. Every day, she picked through the hundreds of Christmas cards she had received the year before and fired off a letter to the sender.
Her three overstuffed address books were never far from her side. When asked what she wanted as a birthday or Christmas gift, “stamps” was always the reply.
Mrs. Blocks also worked for more than 25 years at the rectory at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Buffalo Grove, where she did laundry and other chores.
Other survivors include a daughter, Marion Shepard; a son, Robert; 11 grandchildren; 19 great-grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren. Visitation will be from 2 to 8 p.m. Monday in McMurrough Chapel, 101 Park Pl., in Libertyville. Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Tuesday in St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 75 N. Buffalo Grove Rd. in Buffalo Grove.