A postcard mailed from the United Nations headquarters in New York arrived on the submit workplace in Ottawa, Illinois, in August.
It would have been unremarkable, besides it had been postmarked at 8 p.m. — on June 17, 1953.
Postal officers believed the postcard, addressed to “Rev. F.E. Ball and family,” had been misplaced on the UN for the previous 72 years and was solely just lately discovered and mailed, in accordance to The Times (Ottawa).
By the time it resurfaced, although, the Ball household now not lived at that tackle.
But Ottawa’s postmaster, Mark Thompson, couldn’t simply toss it apart: It deserved to discover its method dwelling to its unique recipient or a descendant.
Determined, Thompson started asking round.
Word unfold, and native reporters picked up the story, intrigued by the mysterious sender who had signed the cardboard, merely, “Alan.”
For Terry Carbone, family tree turned a retirement ardour — and a method to assist others, he mentioned. So when he learn in regards to the postcard within the native newspaper, he knew it was his name to motion. He reached out to the reporter, saying he “may be able to help.”
The LaSalle County Genealogy Guild additionally joined the search. Volunteers sifted by previous newspaper clippings and archives, on the lookout for mentions of “Rev. F.E. Ball” and “Alan” from the time the postcard was sent. Using assets on the Reddick Public Library, they uncovered key items of this thriller surrounding “Alan Ball.”
The search ultimately pointed west. It appeared “Alan” might be Dr. Alan Ball, now 88 and retired greater than 1,700 miles away in Sandpoint, Idaho.
It had all began in 1953 when Ball took a prepare from Ottawa to New York, the place he deliberate to hop a airplane for Puerto Rico to spend the summer time together with his Aunt Mary. His household didn’t have a lot cash, so he had spent a few years mowing lawns and shoveling snow to save for the journey.
Ball was excited to “experience a different language” and new customs. He described that point as “becoming an adult.” He was additionally a bit of nervous — this is able to be his first time on a airplane.
With time to spare in New York earlier than heading to the airport, he stopped on the brand-new United Nations Secretariat Building. There, he put a two-cent stamp on a postcard of the constructing and mailed it to his mother and father to allow them to know, “I made it as far as New York.”
Still at 88, Ball recalled his experiences in Puerto Rico fondly. He described the “jungle in the mountains” at Aunt May’s espresso plantation and mentioned the journey was a “totally new” and “expanding” expertise for him.
What he didn’t know was that the cardboard he had sent dwelling by no means reached his mother and father, as an alternative vanishing into postal limbo.
Then, someday final week, Ball obtained a name from Tom Collins, a journalist from The Times, telling him a postcard he could have sent in 1953 had been recovered.
“When I first heard about it. I think I just started laughing,” Ball mentioned, including it was so weird and surprising.
When the postcard lastly arrived, a Sandpoint postal employee handed it to him with a smile, saying, “Sorry it’s so late.”
Ball chuckled as he recalled the encounter, nonetheless astonished a card he had written as a youngster had resurfaced.
By the time the postcard was formally returned to sender, it had traveled at the least 2,500 miles throughout the nation — thanks to a postmaster, reporters and a crew of genealogists introduced it again to him, closing the loop on a message nobody knew was lacking.