You have to see this! Lost letter from 1943 appears at Illinois post office, employee tracks down family
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A LETTER FROM THE PAST — It’s not uncommon for mail to get lost or delivered later than expected, but one family is grateful to have recently received a letter that was lost for 80 years.
The letter, addressed to an Illinois couple, Lavena and Louis George, was postmarked June 23, 1943, but never made it to its intended recipients. The letter randomly turned up at a post office in DeKalb, Illinois, on Dec. 18, 2023.
Since re-appearing, the letter and the story behind the letter has gotten attention from news outlets and people across the world.
“A message from the past seemingly showing up out of nowhere, that’s pretty incredible,” Jeannette George, daughter of Lavena and Louis George, told 23 WIFR. “Everybody was Gobsmacked like what is this?”
A DeKalb postal worker who came across the letter went the extra mile and tracked down surviving members of the George family. The worker found an obituary online for Lavena from 2012 and then got in touch with the family by using social media.
The letter was delivered to Grace Salazar, Jeannette’s sister. Grace and Jeannette are the only two surviving children.
As they read the letter, they discovered it was sent from Louis’s first cousin. She was sending her condolences to the couple who’s daughter died from cystic fibrosis.
“It put me in touch with my parents grief and the losses my family went through before I was even born,” Jeannette explained.
The post office employee said the most likely reason why the letter wasn’t delivered in the first place was because it was missing a house number on the envelope.
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