Readers,
I came across this delightful and touching story of an American GI buying a Paris hat for his wife in 1944 when I was working on a large files project at the Goldstein Museum of Design, which is on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota.

I don’t remember now whether I first saw this handwritten account by the husband, Thomas McCart, and photographs of his wife, Melva McCart, in a file folder or in the Goldstein’s image database. At any rate, the story stuck with me when I came across it earlier this year. It deserves a wider audience.
This is a perfect little story of a giver, a gift, and a recipient.



To see these and more photographs up close, go to the Goldstein Museum of Design database:
- Click here to go to the home page of the Goldstein Museum of Design
- Click on the tab Collection
- Click on Search the Collection
- In the Word Search box, type McCart
- The record for this hat will appear. Click on the photo of the hat
- You will see more detail than you can see in this post.
All photographs by the Goldstein Museum of Design.