Photograph Source: Dharmabumstead – CC BY-SA 4.0

Dear Mr. Springsteen,

My name is Helen, and I am your biggest fan.

I first saw you in concert when I was in high school. It was in 1985, during your Born in the USA tour. Your show at the Pontiac Silverdome had sold out in 15 minutes. But a friend of mine won tickets from a local radio station, so we and 69,842 other attendees got to see you play for — if I remember right — more than four and a half hours, including four encores.

Back in those days, I had a picture of you up on the door of my locker. I listened to The River and Nebraska while I was doing my homework. I wrote about you in my college application. I even dated a classmate named Bruce (mainly, in retrospect, because he shared your name).

You became my hero, not just because your music is so good — and fun! — but also because your lyrics spoke to me. You understood pain and joy. You wrote about the struggles and triumphs everyday people go through. You were brave enough to talk about class. And you articulated how economic inequality affects real human lives.

As someone who lived in southeastern Michigan in........

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