Thursday, May 9, 2013

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The photo at top is an old hatbox filled with about 250 letters from the 1940s. Below that is a photo of one of the letters and a snapshot that was tucked inside of it.

The hatbox was purchased in 1998 at an estate sale by an Oklahoma woman named Pamela Gilliland, who paid $1 for it. She didn't realize the letters were inside until a few days later. They were all from a pair of brothers who served in World War II and were writing home to their parents. After one perfunctory attempt to locate the family went nowhere, Gilliland put the hatbox and the letters in a closet, where they've sat for the past 15 years.

Gilliland recently learned about a Tulsa-based amateur historian named Doug Eaton, who's had some experience connecting military artifacts with their original owners. She contacted him, and he's now agreed to help her. Here's a shot of him with some of the letters (click to enlarge):

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This seems like a good basis for a book, no? Read more about it in this article from the Tulsa World.

(My thanks to reader James Poisso for bringing this one to my attention.)

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