Exploring an attic, you came across a chest in a darkened corner, with its lid closed tight. Upon opening it, with a rusted key that was left in the lock, you stumbled across a packet of old love letters, written in the hand of one of your grandparents, there is no greater joy than a discovery that proves that you are descended from people who truly loved each other. Not all of us are as lucky to have found these hidden treasures. Sometimes, the intent was there to send one written affirmation of love, only to have the letter lost, and never reach the person it was intended for. Years can go by, the letter writer wonders why he never received a reply to his candid admissions, and sometimes love disappears along with that letter. Granted, these are some rather dated statistics, but you can get an idea why sometimes a piece of mail is lost in the process.
I read this item in the column Offbeat Sun Flashes in the Saturday December 15th, 2007 issue of the Toronto Sun. “A Christmas card mailed in 1914 just arrived in Northwest Kansas. It was dated December 23rd, 1914, and mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, apparently from her cousin in Alma, Nebraska. It’s a mystery where it spent most of the last century.”
Just a few decades back, it was estimated that the U.S. Postal Service handled 369-million pieces of mail a day, weighing 66 1/2 tons. That statistic was found in a short piece in the November 22nd, 1983 issue of the entertainment weekly, Star. You can just imagine how that number has risen over the years. But since we’re dealing with long-lost mail, I thought an earlier figure was appropriate.
It can be a very upsetting experience to receive a letter long thought to be lost, especially if the sender is no longer alive or no longer a part of your life. This first example, fortunately, was not one that contained earth-shaking news. Back in 1994, a letter that was addressed to Senator William Borah of Idaho, eventually found its was three-quarters of a century late. The letter was written on February 26th, 1917 by a Clement Freeman looking for a copy of a report on Diseases of Cattle and Horses, which, at the time, was probably something needed. The letter was discovered by workers as they were laying cable under the floor in a Senate office building. At the time, Senator Larry Craig held Borah’s old seat, and promised a reply if he could ever find Freeman’s family.
That same year, Ellen Lunsford in Northeast Georgia, went to her mail box and found a small white box. When she opened it, she said she almost had a heart attack, for inside was a wallet she had lost more that forty years ago. Apparently, she had misplaced the wallet in California, and it was recently found by a man sorting through some lost and found items in a box. Among more personal items not for our ears was a pay stub with a 55-cent deduction for Federal tax, and 37-cents for State tax.
Back in 1990, a mother’s letter to her daughter complaining about slow mail service, had been delivered 20 years after it was written. Her mother’s name was Martha Leowski, the daughter Ellen Wallace, who at the time of the receipt of the letter was 62. This piece was printed in the December 18th, 1990 issue of the entertainment weekly, Star. The postmark on the letter was January 30th, 1971, Magdeburg, Germany. The piece stated that “[Ellen] Wallace got dizzy when she recognized the handwriting.” The reason being that her mother died in 1982, and it was the only thing she had in her mothers own handwriting. She lived in White Rock, Texas, and the post master didn’t have an explanation why it took a letter-about slow mail delivery-two decades to reach Wallace.
In 1992, William Sidler in Pennsylvania received a birthday card mailed in Italy in 1955. 37 years later, it finally arrived. His daughter had mailed it from the American Embassy in Rome where she worked at the time. The postmark was stamped at an army Air Force post office in Italy, and again after it had arrived in Northern Virginia. The card arrived in mint condition. There was only one problem. Sidler died 37 years before the letter arrived.
Finally, the Reuter’s News Servicein 1994 reported then, that a 74-year-old British man, Walter Mason, received a love letter from his wife, Vera. The letter was written and sent 52 yars before. He served on a few warships during the war, and apparently, the letter followed him from one warship to the next. It never found him, and was returned to a Naval Sorting Office where it remained untouched for all those 52 years. Even though he has finally received it, it remains unopened. He knows that it contains, “Vera’s usual expressions of love and kisses..” That made a tough time easier for a young sailor while he was away at war. You see, Vera died in 1986, and he says it would be “heart-breaking” to open the letter now. So, it remained close to his heart, …but unopened, at the time.
Where do all these letters go for such long periods of time? Some, like the one Walter Mason received, can be traced, to find out exactly where they rested for all those years. Others, seem to get lost in a twilight-like zone, for lost mail, only to show up unexpectedly years later, and either change or affect lives. It’s now possible for us to use our computers to e-mail friends and family, or fax them almost instantaneously across great distances. There’s text-messaging on your cellphone, and even videophone technology…wouldn’t it be strange if, some years down the road, a fax machine that turns on mysteriously in the middle of the night, prints out a love letter that was originally sent many years before? Or a text-message that mysteriously appears on a cellphone? I wonder how many lives that might change?
We may not discover where some letters disappeared for years, but we’ll be there when they mysteriously turn up, sometimes decades later, with all the ramifications that come when a lost letter is finally delivered.
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Don Jackson
