Sharing love to the world, one letter at a time

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 10, 2026) — The article below is featured in the Winter 2025 edition of Kentucky Alumni magazine.

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The tradition started when Rosie Paulik, a 2017 graduate of University of Kentucky's College of Communication and Information, left home in fourth grade to go to sleepaway camp, and it continued through her seven semesters at UK (she is a proud early graduate).  

It carries on with her son.  

Paulik’s father, Buz Ecker, writes letters daily to his family and some close friends. They aren’t always about big, important news — sometimes they just talk about how he and Rosie’s mom Anne washed the windows or carried in groceries.  

Paulik loves receiving them. She’s saved every single one over the years.  

Ecker’s mother is the one who started the letter writing tradition in their family. She wrote her son Buz letters every day while he was at camp and in college. He felt the love with each letter received.  

“My mother inspired me to do that. Once I started when they went to sleepaway camp, I remembered how much it meant for me to get a letter, and I wanted to show that same thing to my children,” he said.  

He showed it so well that receiving the letters became a part of his daughter’s identity. She became known among friends as the girl who got all the letters. She even penned an opinion piece for the UK student newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel, about how special an experience it was.  

Ecker, a retired professor who taught at the University of Cincinnati and Xavier, finished his Ph.D. program in creative writing at Antioch University earlier this year and needed something to fill his time. His daughter thought of all the letters that she received and that he still writes to his five grandchildren. She posted a TikTok in July asking if anyone could use a letter from a dad with hopes of expanding her dad’s reach. It quickly gained traction.  

As the demand grew, the father-daughter duo found themselves searching for other dads who had the time, wisdom, empathy and dad jokes to write letters to people in need. They called it the Dad Letter Project.  

Media coverage about their project led to an increase in requests for letters with every story or video posted. Ecker and Paulik had to recruit more and more dads.  

Despite working full-time, Paulik interviews a dad or two each week to deal with more than 3,000 letter requests in the queue.  

“This is not for everybody,” she said. “The tediousness that some dads feel with getting a pen and paper, they want to help but can’t. Then there are some dads who are just like my dad. They’re so excited for this opportunity to help more people.”  

While there is no official criteria to be a Dad Letter-writing dad, Paulik has gathered a variety of men who are writing for the project, from former dementia ward nurses to fourth grade classroom volunteers.  

This helps her manually match each letter request to a letter writer, who will then write a letter at least partially based on the form filled out on the official site for the request.  

Some dads may take a while to respond. Others, like Ecker, spend all day writing letters because of the joy it brings them.  

“I get way more out of writing the letters than the people who receive them,” Ecker said.  

For some letter requesters, Ecker has even become an honorary dad. If he sees that someone is truly in need of a father, he takes up the mantle. He estimates that he’s adopted 50-60 people around the world in the months since the beginning of the Dad Letter Project.  

One of these people, a girl from Michigan who lost her father in April, is a perfect example of how close they stay to his heart.  

“I take it personally, and I love and cherish her as much as I would one of my own, because she’s in such great need and such great pain,” Ecker said.  

Paulik appreciates the connections found through the project, too.  

“It’s really sweet,” Paulik said. “I think a lot of the requests are from people missing their dads and so they want to hear from a dad, but in some way, they feel like they’re hearing from their own dad that passed away. Because even just seeing chicken scratch on a letter, it’s like, this feels like it came from beyond. It’s special.”  

There are guidelines in place. Repeat letters are allowed. But that’s all it can be.  

“As part of the rules, I can only write them letters. I can’t meet them or text them, and that’s the way it should be,” Ecker said.  

As the queue for letters grew, so did Paulik’s resolve to solidify what she and her father are doing into something that will last to fulfill that need.  

“I would think there’s an unending supply of people who need letters,” her father said, “especially when it’s all over the world.”  

Their goal is to support more dads writing letters, but there have been talks of eventually adding moms to the letter-writing. It’s the second biggest demand they’ve seen.  

And there’s no shortage of moms who are ready to meet that demand. Some have emailed Paulik, while others have applied as dads to the Dad Letter Project site. Paulik’s mom contributes by putting together starter kits consisting of stationery, pens, envelopes and stamps for the dads who are writing letters.  

“I think it’s interesting how much I took it for granted, until this project started,” Paulik said, adding that she still receives letters from her dad whom she lives 20 minutes away from. The demand for the letters and the positive response to the project surprised her. 

“It was just a reminder of how unique getting a letter from my dad is, let alone every day.”  

Now that she’s begun to share that experience with the world, she only appreciates it more. Paulik feels the support of many friends and family behind her as she prepares for the next steps of the Dad Letter Project, one of which will be finding funding for the organization.  

Paulik wouldn’t exactly say hopeful, but she feels reassured that when the time comes, the funding will, too.  

“It’s nice because so many people want it to happen and to be successful, and so a lot of people are helping with building the Dad Letter Project and making it successful in the future,” she said.  

As for her dad, the letter-writing dad who started it all? He remains humble and dedicated to the cause.  

“This is just our little way of showing love to the world.”