So Shocked': Post Office Delivers WWII-Era Postcard Roughly 70 Years Late

(AP File Photo)

A postcard mailed nearly 70 years ago has finally arrived at the former upstate New York home of the couple who sent it.

The postcard was sent July 4, 1943, from Rockford, Ill., to sisters Pauline and Theresa Leisenring in Elmira.

Their brother, George Leisenring, was stationed at Rockford's Medical Center Barracks at Camp Grant, an Army post during World War II, and their parents were away visiting him when they sent the note.

The postcard reads, according to Elmira's Star-Gazette:

“Dear Pauline and Theresa, We arrived safe, had a good trip, but we were good and tired. Geo. looks good, we all went out to dinner today (Sunday). Now we are in the park. Geo has to go back to Grant at 12 o’clock tonight. Do not see much of him. We are going to make pancakes for Geo for supper tonight. See you soon. Love Mother, Dad.”

A different family now lives in the house, and they were understandably baffled.

The Star-Gazette has more:

"It was delivered in mint condition. We were so shocked,” [resident Laura Rundell] said. “It’s a treasure that just showed up in the mailbox with our address on it.”

“We hear about things like this happening every once in a while,” said Karen Mazurkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service in Buffalo. “Generally, if old mail pieces are uncovered in a postal facility, they are put in the mail with information about where the items are found.”

[...]

Theresa and Pauline may never have known about the postcard.

Theresa died in 1954, Pauline in 1962, according to records at nearby Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira.

One of the young girls who now lives in the house wants to do a history project on the postcard, but offered the actual artifact to the surviving relatives of its intended recipients.

If they don't accept it, though, Laura Rundell plans to keep it.

“It finally made it to this house,” she explained. “We’ll find a place for it in our home.”

​The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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