Sixty years later, Christmas wishes have finally found their recipients.
A stack of Christmas cards mailed in 1953 have finally found their way home after a six-decade circuitous journey, The Daily Freeman reported.
It's the same newspaper responsible for reuniting two Ulster, N.Y. brothers with their parents’ long-lost Christmas cards.
The story begins in 1953, when a stack of about 50 Christmas cards were sent to Vincent and Marina Maggiore. Sixty years later, a New York City flea market vendor found the cards at an auction held a few months ago. Then, Rick Buser, who was shopping at a flea market who used to live in Ulster County, spotted the cards.
“I noticed a box of cards, and I thought it was kind of odd that someone would be selling mail," Buser told the newspaper.
“I looked closely and saw the address was Kingston, and that’s where I grew up. When I looked closer, I saw Sawkill Road, so now, I was really intrigued,” he said.
“What were the odds of me seeing something from the same town and road I grew up on?”
He bought the cards for $15 and sent the stack to the Maggiore’s local newspaper, The Daily Freeman.
Paula Mitchell, a Daily Freeman reporter, surprised the brothers with their long-lost cards on Dec. 18.
“Whoever would’ve thought we’d be seeing these cards from 1953?” Vincent and Marina’s son Albert told the Daily Freeman in an on-camera interview with Daily Freeman reporter Paula Mitchell.
“It’s nice to see the letters again,” Albert’s brother Robert said.
Most of the cards were addressed to Vincent and Marina Maggiore; some of the yellowed, moldy envelopes had been opened, but many remained sealed. They were affixed with three-cent stamps and some of the letters were written in Italian.
But their 79-year-old son also received one from his then girlfriend, the newspaper reported.
“That was really exciting,” Robert told the Daily Freeman. “I didn’t know what my wife, Sue, was going to say.”
Buser, the man who discovered the letters, hopes that the 60-year-old message hasn't faded with time.
“Hopefully, it will bring some sense of Christmas joy," he said.
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