Story at a glance
- The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivered a letter written by an American soldier serving in Germany 76 years after it was dropped in the mail.
- The letter was written by John Gonsalves to his mother and was delivered to his wife last month.
- USPS said they don’t know where the letter has been over the past seven decades or how it ended up in a Pittsburgh facility.
John Gonsalves was an American soldier serving in Germany and a letter he wrote to his mother was recently delivered 76 years after he dropped it in the mail.
Gonsalves’ wife, Angelina “Jean” Gonsalves, received the unexpected delivery last month, hand delivered by a U.S. Postal Service (USPS) mail carrier. Upon opening the envelope, Angeline found a letter her husband had written to his mother while he was stationed in Bad Orb, Germany, near a Nazi-prisoner-of-war camp that was liberated by American Troops, according to The Washington Post.
The couple had been married for 61 years when Gonsalves passed away in 2015 at the age of 92. While reading the letter Jean told The Post it felt as though her husband was in the room with her.
“It was a weird feeling — like he was standing there, reading it to me. I smiled when I saw his beautiful handwriting. I always loved how he wrote his E’s,” said Jean.
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Gonsalves’ letter detailed his experience serving in Germany, describing gloomy weather and unappetizing food.
Jean said her and Gonsalves met in 1949. The two got married four years later and went on to raise five sons together.
“There was nothing he loved more than taking the boys camping and hiking and fixing things up around the house for all of us. I miss him every day,” said Jean.
A mail carrier delivered Gonsalves’ letter to her home in Woburn, Mass., last month and it also included a letter from Stephen D. Stowell, a USPS worker from the agency’s processing and distribution center in Pittsburgh.
Stowell acknowledged the unprecedented delay in delivering the letter and said USPS was uncertain about where the letter had been for the past seven decades or how it arrived at his facility.
“By virtue of some dedicated sleuth work by postal workers at this facility, we were able to determine your address, hence this letter delivery to you, albeit 76 years late,” said Stowell, according to The Post.
Despite the staggering delivery delay, Jean and her sons welcomed Gonsalves’ letter.
“I can picture my dad writing that letter to his mom, hoping he would soon be coming home to see her. Although it never made it to his mom, it made it to mine. And we’ve all been on an amazing little journey because of it,” said Brian Gonsalves, to The Post.
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