14 DAY TRIAL // Hurricane Sandy exposes a decade-old romance, as love letters dating back to World War II are washed ashore in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey.
A young woman had 57 letters written to her fiancé in Vermont. 14-year-old Patrick Chaney found the memorabilia on the beach, and brought them to his mother.
She noted the letters had been sent over six years’ time, starting with 1942. They ended a week before the couple married, in 1948.
Their content sounded very sentimental, chronicling a long-distance relationship which had managed to remain a strong one.
“Well Darling, two weeks from today and we will be married. [...] I don't feel like sleeping so I thought I'd write you a few lines,” one letter read.
The farewell passage always stayed the same: “I love you dear and miss you very much. All my love always, Dottie.”
Kathleen started investigating, and googled the sender and recipient of the letters, Dorothy Fallon and Lynn Farnham, after drying them out.
“I wanted to return them to whoever they belonged to. [...] They're beautiful. She obviously adored him,” Kathleen says to NBC New York.
She posted an ad on Craigslist, searching for the rightful owner, but received no responses. On a hunch, she went on to access findagrave.com. Her instincts proved right, as she found that Lynn Farnham had passed away in 1991.
That is how she reached out to whoever had posted the information about Lynn, and got ahold of a niece who was happy to pass the message on. Kathleen found Dorothy Fallon Farnham, now aged 91, in an assisted care facility in Asbury Park, N.J..
The storm had brought the letters on the Shrewsbury River, all the way to Rumson, N.J., and Dorothy was glad to have them back.