A wallet (illustration).
-
Pixabay / Goumbik
A US Navy meteorologist found his wallet he had lost… 53 years earlier in Antarctica.
Paul Grisham, now 91, couldn't even remember losing the object.
Strangers contacted him to deliver it to him by mail, the California daily
The San Diego Union-Tribune
told Thursday
.
The nonagenarian's wallet was discovered when the science base on Ross Island was destroyed in 2014.
The sailor was stationed there as a forecaster from October 1967 to November 1968. Grisham's wallet was thus hidden behind a cloakroom and contained, among other things, his Navy identity card, his driver's license, instructions in biological or chemical attack, and ... a ration ticket for the beer.
San Diego man reunited with wallet lost in Antarctica 53 years ago https://t.co/SE8uOHs7Lh pic.twitter.com/qEp0yS70z9
- San Diego Union-Tribune (@sdut) February 4, 2021
A whole chain to find the owner
It is a whole chain of Good Samaritans who made it possible to return the object to its owner.
One of the managers of a research group in Antarctica contacted one of his former employees who had already succeeded in such an operation with a sailor's bracelet discovered in a store.
With his daughter, they appealed to a foundation for veterans, who contacted the Association of the Naval Weather Service of which Paul Grisham was a member.
The wallet finally arrived last Saturday in good condition at the veteran's residence in San Carlos, Southern California.
The stunned sailor said he was "blown away" that so many people scrambled to give him his wallet.
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