A lost letter sent by an Illinois teenager has finally been returned. Only now that Illinois teenager is an Idaho octogenarian.
As Shaw Local reports, Alan Ball was taking a trip from his hometown of Ottawa, Illinois, to Puerto Rico in 1953 and made a stop in New York City. While in the Big Apple, he decided to send a postcard from the United Nations building to his parents back home. However, they never received the letter.
Seventy-two years later, the postcard showed up at an Ottawa post office with zero explanation. Postmaster Mark Thompson posits the card may have slipped into a crack or the like when it was supposed to be first mailed from the UN back in 1953, and was only recently discovered and mailed properly.
With the help of some local genealogists, Thompson was able to locate Ball, now 88 and living in Sandpoint, Idaho, and return the postcard to him.
“I’ll be doggoned,” Ball says of the reunion. “It’s a beautiful day here. You just made it more beautiful.”
Who knows, maybe that check you were expecting truly is in the mail.