Woman gets call about 'message in a bottle' late sister had thrown as a girl in 1973. It took 53 years
A volunteer's unexpected discovery brought Laurie's childhood wish full circle decades after she wrote it.
When 9-year-old Laurie Blair Brown asked her 16-year-old sister Allison Spencer to write a message, she was positive it would make it back home. On August 20, 1973, Laurie had a silly idea to write an amusing note to send in a bottle. She made up a story about being kidnapped by 'ruthless sponge fishermen,' and requested anyone who found the note to return it to her family, NJ Advanced Media reported. 53 years later, Laurie's message was discovered by John Kauterman, an environmental advocate from Avalon. He eventually returned it to Allison, who got the letter nine years after Laurie's passing. 6abc (@6abcactionnews) also reported the story on July 27, and the video received 37,500 views, 1,885 likes, and 31 comments.
'She was confident it would be found'
John Kauterman was cleaning the wetlands in Cape May County when he found the bottle. His initial reaction after reading Laurie's letter was that it was a prank. Nonetheless, he shared photos of his discovery on Facebook, and within 12 hours, Facebook users connected him to Allison. She was shocked to see her own handwriting from all those years, and told the news outlet, "My sister, who was a very creative and quirky person, had a really great sense of humor. She immediately latched onto this idea, and she came up with the crazy story." Sadly, Laurie passed away in 2017 at 52 years old due to cancer. But Allison believed it was Laurie's way of proving a point: "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.'"
Tall tales
For those curious about Laurie's letter, it read, "This bottle was adrift on August 20, 1973, on 2nd Street beach Ocean City as my captors were transporting me to an island offshore in the Atlantic." She asked the finder to let her family know she was kidnapped by "a band of ruthless sponge fishermen" who forced her to dive into "shark-infested waters." She wrote down her full address to make sure it reached her family. Five decades later, it did, and Allison revealed that she planned to keep her sister's letter in a shadow box and frame it in her house.
Lost and found
People may think that finding messages in bottles is rare, but the Bundesamt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie (The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency of Germany) preserves a worldwide collection of scientific and historical bottles and their messages. Estimates cited by the BSH show that the odds of a message in a bottle being recovered intact are only about 10%. Cliff Buffington, an enthusiast of the same, or as he calls himself, "finder of messages in bottles," on his official website, found his very first message in a bottle in 2007 and has never stopped looking since. So far, he has found 120 messages. He described finding messages in bottles, "Like your first kiss, your first broken heart – a lightning strike so powerful you’ll never forget it... The magic never wears off!"
Doing the good work
Netizens believed this was no coincidence and that things happen for a reason. They also applauded Kauterman for what he does. @eladiooooooooo13 commented, "Yo, this pulled out my heartstrings tremendously. Oh my God, that’s just so magnificent." @lbess16 wrote, "Thank you for what you do!"
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