A Namao man got an early Christmas present last Friday in the form of a letter from his mom – one that took 69 years to reach him.
Namao historian Jack Speers said he got a call on Nov. 30 from Morinville RCMP.
“They phoned me to see if I was Jack Speers, and they said they had a letter (addressed) to me,” he said.
A resident brought the letter and two postcards to the detachment last week out of concern that they might have been stolen from Speers, said Cpl. Bryce Tarzwell of the Morinville RCMP.
In fact, Speers had never received the mail. When he said he couldn’t drive to the detachment, an officer delivered the items to him.
The letter was addressed to Speers in St. Thomas, Ont. and postmarked “Edmonton, December 24, 6 p.m., 1943, Alberta.”
“I knew it was from my mother,” Speers said of the letter, as he recognized the return address on the envelope – it’s the same address as his current home (his mother used to live across the street).
“She’s been dead for 20 years,” he said.
Speers said that his mother, Bertha May Speers, apparently sent the letter to him while he was training to become an air-force mechanic in St. Thomas in 1943. He never got it, and suspected that it had been lost in the postal system for 69 years.
The letter came in a yellowing envelope that was already open when Speers received it. On it are two red-coloured four-cent stamps that depict King George VI in an army uniform.
Inside was a letter from Bertha May to Speers dated Dec. 24, 1943, written in neat handwriting with black ink on a single sheet of paper.
“Dear Jack,” Bertha May wrote, “Sorry you finally caught up with the flu.”
She went on to ask if Speers had received a money order she sent (Speers couldn’t recall one), and noted how she had gotten his father, Harry, a $12 Lifetime Parker fountain pen for Christmas.
She also wrote that she couldn’t get a .22-calibre rifle for Speer’s brother, Don.
“They couldn’t get one during the war,” Speers said.
Bertha May noted that she planned to invite two relatives over for Christmas dinner.
“Hope it doesn’t end in a free-for-all,” she added before closing with, “Happy New Year and Love from Mom.”
The letter came with a colour postcard of the St. Andrews Locks in Winnipeg and a black-and-white one depicting several Harvard airplanes at an airfield. Speers wasn’t sure if these cards were actually sent with the letter, as they wouldn’t have fit in the envelope.
Speers, 87, said he was amazed to receive the old letter.
“It really hasn’t faded that much for 70 years,” he said.
He plans to put it in the Namao museum.
At this point, the whereabouts of the letter for the past 69 years is a mystery. Tarzwell said he plans to look into how the man who brought him the letter got it in the first place.
“It’s one of those feel-good Christmas stories,” he quipped. “Seventy years later, he gets a letter from his mom!”
