The porch, where four daughters grew up, and where every letter sent home from the war was read.

In 1943, Eleanor and Robert Hale purchased a two story Colonial house on Maple Avenue, settling into a small Ohio town. The price tag came to $8,200. Robert spent his days at the grain elevator, while Eleanor taught third graders. Four daughters filled their home.

The draft called Robert in 1944. He wrote home like clockwork every Tuesday. Eleanor would read his words on the porch swing, whether the sun shone or rain fell, the girls a blur of motion in the yard. She kept all 147 letters tucked away in a shoebox beneath her bed.

Robert returned home in 1946. He tackled the porch roof himself, using lumber salvaged from a barn that was being dismantled two counties away. The girls grew, then married. They scattered to Cleveland, Chicago, and for a short time, San Francisco. Eleanor and Robert, though, remained on Maple Avenue.

He passed away in 1987. She stayed on for another two decades, alone in the house, with the shoebox and the porch swing that offered a comforting, rhythmic creak. When she moved into assisted living in 2007, she handed the shoebox to Margaret, her oldest granddaughter.

Last month, Margaret put the house on the market. But she did something unexpected. She assembled a "story packet," a collection of scanned letters, photographs of the porch, and a recording of Eleanor's voice recounting summers. This packet she attached to the listing. It wasn't a marketing trick. It was a requirement.

"I want the buyer to understand what took place here," she explained. "A house is only wood and nails. A home, however, is the total of every event that unfolded within its walls. I am selling the wood. The rest of it, I am giving away."