Woman Receives ‘Christmas Miracle’ Over Half a Century After Her Parents Boarded a Plane and Were Never Heard From Again

In 1959, when Joyce Wharton was a young girl, her mother and father boarded a plane bound for Seattle. Then they, along with the pilot, were never heard from again.

Image source: WABC-TV

The family lived with unanswered questions until wreckage of the plane was found 15 years later, deep in the woods of Washington state.

With resolution long since attained, Wharton got a life-affirming phone call this week from a logger who'd been trying to reach her for years. He'd found something he wanted Wharton to have.

Her mother's wedding ring.

Image source: WABC-TV

"To me, it's my Christmas miracle," Wharton told WABC-TV. "And I look at the ring, and I think about my mother. It's like reaching back in time."

Image source: WABC-TV

Nick Buchanan happened upon the ring near the crash site and, with his nephew's help, used Ancestry.com to track down Wharton, WABC reported. Soon, her mother's still-sparkling ring was making the 3,000-mile journey from Centralia, Washington, to Wayne, New Jersey.

Image source: WABC-TV

"My mouth was open," she told the station. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing...it restores your faith in human nature, because there's so many bad things happening. And yet there are good people out there, kind people. People persevere."