July 27 (UPI) — A man cleaning up the wetlands in New Jersey found a message in a bottle that had been launched by a 9-year-old girl 53 years earlier.
John Kauterman, co-founder of The Tidelands Initiative, was conducting a routine cleaning in the Upper Township wetlands when he came across a sealed bottle containing a 9-year-old’s joke.
The note reads: “This bottle was adrift on August 20, 1973 on 2nd Street beach Ocean City as my captors were transporting me to an island off shore in the Atlantic. Please notify my family that a band of ruthless sponge fisherman are forcing me to dive for them in shark infested waters! Please return this note to my home in [address]. You may have saved my life! Thank you. Laurie Blair.”
Kauterman shared a photo of the message to social media in the hopes of locating Blair, and the post eventually reached her sister, Allison Spencer.
Spencer explained that Blair had dictated the letter to her, as she was 16 at the time and had the better handwriting. They then launched the bottle from an Ocean City beach.
“My sister, who was a very creative and quirky person, had a really great sense of humor,” Spencer told NJ.com. “She immediately latched onto this idea and she came up with the crazy story.”
Kauterman learned Blair had died from cancer in 2019, and was also surprised to discover he and Blair shared the same birthday.
He mailed the letter to Spencer, who said she plans to frame it in a shadow box for display in her home.
“She was really confident at the time we wrote it that it was going to be found, so I think she would say, ‘I told you so,'” Spencer said.
