Couple's World War II-Era Love Letters Found in New York Attic Reach Daughter After 80 Years
Letters from a world-war-torn couple reached their daughter 80 years later due to the great efforts of a stranger. In 1995, Dottie Kearney and her husband purchased a home on Staten Island in New York, and while doing some renovations found some letters, Fox News reported.
After reading the letters, Kearney figured out that the letters were correspondence between a couple, while the husband was out serving in World War II.
According to Kearney, the letter fell through a crack in the attic. Reading the letters, she could feel the profound love, between the couple. "He called her 'dearest Marie.' He told her how he spent five cents and treated himself to dinner one night. She kept him alive during the war. He lived for her. It’s like the love story you read about or see in a movie and wish you had," Kearney shared.
Kearney also noted the stellar condition of the letters and how carefully they had been kept in the house. Despite, so many decades the letters were found with military postage, and all the words were visible.
"You could tell she opened them with care and cherished them," Kearney said. "Everything was still intact. Nothing was smudged, nothing was discolored. They were pretty amazing."
Kearney wanted to return the letters to the couple or their family, but could not locate them, Fox News reported. She kept the letters safe with her for years and took them when she and her partner sold the house and moved to another place. Kearney always looked for ways to reach out to the couple's descendants.
Through the years, she kept reading the letters again and again, becoming more attached to the love story in the process, The New York Post reported. "I couldn’t bear to throw [the letters] away because they were so beautiful. I told my husband that one day we’re going to find the owners," Kearney said.
Kearney's wish came true when she saw New York-based heirloom hunter Chelsey Brown, 30, on "The Kelly Clarkson Show," Fox News reported. Brown, a New York-based interior decorator devotes her time to reuniting historical artifacts with long-lost family members. In the show, Brown talked about her passion, and how she finds family members of people who previously owned the artifacts.
Hearing Brown talk about the endeavor with so much zeal, Kearney decided to take her help. Kearney reached out to Brown, who immediately took up the project, because of her rule of prioritizing World War and Holocaust-related items. "The second I realized these were World War II letters, I knew I needed to help Dottie find the rightful descendants of the couple who wrote them," Brown shared.
Brown used her resources and figured out that the letters belonged to Claude Marsten Smythe and Marie Borgal Smythe, and also found the couple's daughter Carol Bohlin, 76, who now lives in Vermont, Fox News reported.
Bohlin was emotionally moved after receiving those letters. She shared that her family moved out of the Staten Island house after her mother's death and they had no idea about these correspondences.
Bohlin mentioned that her father was serving in the US Navy, during World War II, and that is when these exchanges happened between her parents.
For Bohlin, these letters confirmed what she always knew, that her parents loved each other and their family a lot. "They had a very good relationship," Bohlin said. "They were happy with each other and they loved each other. My father was always concerned about my mother."
Bohlin is happy to have these letters and will always hold them close to her heart, Fox News reported. She read the letters along with a friend and went through a rollercoaster of feelings.
"Sometimes I laughed and then sometimes I cried. I felt like they were here again," Bohlin said. "I miss my mom and I miss my dad. It was like they were here with me. And I will always have these letters."