Lisa Lynde went to a estate sales in Michigan and bought herself a wooden bureau from the event. She had it shipped, then, to Grand Rapids where she was really residing. She never thought the drawer she brought would yield an unexpected find – a letter from a WWII soldier written to his sister.
“I like to go to estate sales,” she said and just happened to be in Michigan when she spotted the dresser. She added, “I thought the dresser had been cleaned out but when I put the drawers back in the letter popped out.”
She felt returning the letter to its rightful owner is important so it became her quest.
“I used my computer and the obituaries which ultimately led me to Dewey’s son and eventually to Pam in San Diego,” she said.
Pam Bitterman, daughter of the letter’s recipient, was teary-eyed when she talked about all that happened.
“We would have never known … never … this is just wonderful,” the now pacific Beach resident spoke out. “Dewey was the big brother. He and my mother Harriet were very close.”
Dewey Jacobs, the man who penned the letter, like so many young Americans that time had signed up for WWII and was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. It was while being there that he wrote the letter for his younger sister Harriet in time for her 19th birthday.
“‘On this 19th birthday, I know I cannot be with you longer but at least we’ve shared a few moments,'” Pam Bitterman quoted from the letter.
However, the reason behind why it was not delivered to its rightful owner those long years will now always remain a mystery.
“My uncle’s dead now, so is my mom, my grandma, her sister…all the primary persons connected to the letter are long gone,” Bitterman said.
Nevertheless, she is very happy about the letter’s discovery and feels, now that the letter is in her own hands, it had just come full circle.
“If my mother were alive she would have said it was meant to be that this letter was found,” she added.