Gary Katen, a resident of Hackensack, New Jersey, was taken aback when he opened his mailbox one day. “I open up the mailbox and I get this letter and I’m like, ok, first of all, this isn’t me. It’s airmail and I then look closely, and it’s dated May 4th, 1946 is the postmark. Wow. 75 years ago!”
Two one-cent stamps and a six-cent postage, the cost for air mail, were still glued to the envelope.
The letter was mailed in a new post-war America, as World War II had ended a few months prior. Harry Truman was the President, and the Marx Brothers were dominating the silver screen.
Katen attempted to recall who the letter could have possibly been from prior to opening it: “75 years ago, I said, ok, so it’s got to be a friend of mine goofing on me because I’ve been complaining about not getting my mail. Lo and behold, it’s a real letter.”
A second letter arrived a few weeks thereafter, provoking him to open both letters together. While the handwriting was a little challenging to read, it appears to have been correspondence between a husband and his in-laws in New Jersey.
Katen became determined to return the mail to its rightful owner and took it upon himself to do some homework. He went and checked with the post office in Hackensack and reviewed property records. The search hit a speed bump after paperwork revealed that there was a fire in town that may have destroyed some public records. “We’d love to be able to meet the people that it was addressed to because they all sound like such a great family and say, we got your mail,” Katen said.
When the United States Postal Service was asked by FOX 5 News how a letter could arrive at the right place more than seven decades later, Communications specialist Xavier Hernandez said this in a statement: “What we typically find is that old mail pieces, like these, are found by someone and then deposited into one of our collection boxes. Old letters and postcards can also be purchased at flea markets, antique shops, and even be purchased online, then they are re-entered into the system. In most cases, these incidents do not involved mail that has been lost in the network and later found.”
Katen, skeptical of whether or not that’s the case, remains hopeful that one day he may finally reconnect a family with its history.