Why Not Just Quote the Letter?
Re “Did Young Richard Nixon Romp Here?,†June 3:
Your article misleads readers about the Yorba Linda Historical Conservancy’s quest to preserve the 90-year-old Park Place house in the city where the distinguished American writer Jessamyn West allegedly lived for a while with her family. Your article rightly asserts that the allegation’s strongest evidence of her residency is a 1979 Yorba Linda Star letter to the editor from West responding to an earlier Star story accompanied by a photo of the house in question.
However, your article recklessly paraphrases her letter as having stated that “she believed it was the house where she lived during her college years.â€
It would have been far more truthful and just to have instead quoted West’s precise language: “Thank you for sending the ‘Star’ with the picture of the house in which I lived through college days and from which I was married.â€
Arthur A. Hansen
Yorba Linda
