Scott Ritter was helping to replace mailboxes at an apartment building in San Diego last year when something caught his eye: an old, unopened greeting card covered in cobwebs and dust.
The letter carrier suspected that the intended recipient was a long-gone college student — the area is popular with university students — and the envelope’s cursive writing “reminded me of my own grandma. I instantly had the instinct to get this back to her,” he said.
Upon returning to the office, Ritter informed his manager of the find and mailed the card back to the original sender with a note explaining where it was discovered.
In January, Ritter was surprised to receive a response — and it confirmed his original hunch. The writer explained that the original sender was her husband’s grandmother. She though that the card was probably mailed to him around 2010.
“Every week, [she] sent each of her college grandchildren a note with $10 in it,” the woman wrote.
As fate would have it, her husband received the card — about 15 years late — when he arrived in Chicago for his grandmother’s funeral. She died five days shy of her 99th birthday.
Honoring an American hero
The Raleigh, NC, Post Office has been renamed to honor Millie Dunn Veasey, one of the 855 women who helped sort and deliver millions of mailpieces in the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion during World War II.
“Millie Dunn Veasey is an American hero — a veteran and civil rights leader who served in the only overseas all-Black women’s battalion, ensuring that soldiers on the front lines received letters from loved ones at home,” said U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross (D-NC), who sponsored the bill to rename the office.
During the war, the 6888th cleared a three-year mail backlog in just three months.
The battalion’s work is depicted in the new film “The Six Triple Eight,” written and directed by Tyler Perry and starring Kerry Washington.
Veasey died in 2018, shortly after celebrating her 100th birthday.
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