Earnest or playful, that Valentine’s card has a history

It was Valentine’s Day 1917 in the Minnesota farming village of Lewiston, and Fred Roth — a fourth grader — seems to have come up with just the way to express his love for his sweetheart, Louise Wirt. He gave her a card.

The folding, pop-up Valentine’s Day card, on stock so heavy it remains in good shape 106 years later, reads: “Forget me not!/I ask of thee/Reserve one spot/In your heart for me.”

And so she did. Years later they married, and Louise displayed the cherished card, tucked into the fretwork of a bedroom dresser, for decades to come. She pointed it out to her daughter, and later to a granddaughter, me, and it remained near her bedside until her death at 91, a token of lasting love.

Although the message was in English, the card is printed with the word “Germany” and is seemingly imported, as were many