Archie Cota, 88,of South Burlington received cards from all over Vermont on his recent birthday– not only from friends and family members, but also from people he has never met. Emily McDonald, 67, of Colchester, mails some 25 letters each month to penpals all over the state. Long time members of the Vermont Sunshine Society, a volunteer organization that encourages these mailings, both Cota and McDonald find that their correspondence turns strangers into friends.

"I'm sorry that letter writing is getting to be a dying art," says McDonald. "You can keep handwritten letters and read them over and over. It's hard to throw them away."

The Vermont Sunshine Society makes sure that some 600 mostly elderly Vermonters receive birthday cards, holiday greetings, a chatty monthly newsletter, and opportunities to correspond with like-minded people. And it's done without e-mail, relying on volunteers, individual donations, and most recently small grants from foundations.

Liz Durovich of Stowe learned about the Sunshine Society fifteen years ago. "The  idea just jumped out at me," she says. Her mother had recently died; her father, Ronald MacDonald, then 87, was hard of hearing, but he was very active, in good health, and an avid writer. Upon joining the Sunshine Society, he immediately received "tons of letters," Durovich says. He turned his dining room table and a card table into a correspondence center, and he developed a file system for his letters.  "I think that all those contacts kept him going," Durovich says.

After her father died in 2002, Durovich continued to write letters through the Sunshine Society, and she became part of the three-person management team. Now she writes about thirty letters a month. "I can drive and still get out," Durovich says. "But I realize how important mail is to people who cannot get out."

Now on its own, the Sunshine Society started in Vermont in 1941 as a branch of the national Shut-In Society, which dates back to the late nineteenth century. Anyone can sign up, and the service is free of charge. Most of the members are home bound elderly, but people of all ages are welcome.

If you join and want mail, your name and address will appear in an issue of "The Gristmill," a monthly newsletter written by director Bev Grimes from her home in Bradford. "The Gristmill" includes news about Grimes and her family, garden, pets, and travel. She also includes poems and puzzles and the doings of other Sunshiners that she receives from members. Each issue includes the names, addresses, and birth dates of all members born during that month. Recipients use these listings to send greetings to old friends and start corresponding with new ones. "It's a ripple thing," Grimes says.

Grimes, 57, became the volunteer director of the Vermont Sunshine Society three years ago, a labor of love she sustains along with her full-time paid job as business manager for an architectural firm. Besides writing the newsletter, she organizes the mailings, creates hand-made birthday and holiday cards, and personally answers some ten letters she receives from Sunshiners each day. In the winter of 2005, she compiled and mailed out a "cabin fever reliever," thirty pages of poems, funny stories, sketches, photos, and decorative mystery envelopes. She likes to work with activities directors at assisted living facilities and nursing homes to add the names of residents to her mailing list.

"Sometimes, I wonder what I'm doing," Grimes says. "But I love old people, always have. And I love making the cards. I don't know what I would do without all this."

Bev McCullough of Bethel, the third member of the management team, found out about the Sunshine Society in 1968. Because she was raising six children and holding down a full-time job, she was able to write only a few notes each month. Now, in her seventies, she has more time, she says. She writes to everyone on the birthday list, and she writes weekly to friends she has made through the Society.

"Do what you can," she advises new members. "Don't feel bad if you cannot write many letters. Every little bit helps."

Some 25-30 volunteers mail out "The Gristmill" and Grimes' cards, including members of the Bugbee Senior Center in White River Junction and adolescents living in the Mountainside House in Ludlow. The annual budget for making all this happen is $3000 - $4000. Many people send in sheets of stamps to help out, Grimes says.

"Writing letters is a simple thing," says Durovich, "but it's so rewarding. When I get a thank-you scribble back, it makes me want to write thirty more letters."

For more information about the Sunshine Society, contact Bev Grimes at 225 Plateau Acres, Bradford, VT 05033.

Barbara Leitenberg writes on senior issues for the Champlain Valley Agency on Aging. This article originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press.