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Fifty-three years ago, Allison Spencer’s mother sent her and her baby sister to the beach in Ocean City, NJ, with a mission: Write a message in a bottle, then throw it into the ocean.
“He was always looking for ways to get us out of the house,” Spencer said As It Happened hosted by Loren McInnis.
Two girls are committed. Laurie, who was nine years old at the time, composed a heartwarming story about being kidnapped by “brutal sponge fishermen,” while Allison, 16, faithfully wrote the tale.
They wrapped it in a Coca-Cola bottle and set it aside.
“I’m sure we expected it to be available sooner,” Spencer said As It Happened hosted by Loren McInnis. “When it wasn’t, I didn’t think about it for 53 years.”
That is, until last month, when John Kauterman discovered a perfectly preserved note while cleaning up New Jersey’s wetlands.
“When John showed me the picture of the paper, I was so scared to miss me,” said Spencer.
“My sister died nine years ago. She had breast cancer, and she died when she was only 50 years old and I miss her so much. So it’s a wonderful, special thing for me that this paper is back.”
As It Happened7:39A NJ man reunites a woman with a 53-year-old message in a bottle from her late sister
Kauterman, who is the founder of the nonprofit Tidelands Initiative, has been picking up trash in his state’s wetlands for several years. Bottled messages, he says, are a dime a dozen.
“I can get one a week, or one a month,” he said.
But this one, he says, was special.
“I was like, ‘wow … the bottle is old,'” he said. “I looked at it and saw the first line, ‘This was established on August 20, 1973.’ And I was like, oh my god, yes, we have a good one here.”
He fished out the entire note, and posted a photo of it on a local Facebook page, where he quickly found his way back to Spencer in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he now lives.
The letter reads:
“This bottle was stopped on August 20, 1973, at Second Street Beach, Ocean City, when my captors were taking me to an island off the Atlantic coast. Please inform my family that a band of vicious sponge fishermen are forcing me to drown in shark-infested waters. Please return this paper to my home.”
Signed “You may have saved my life! Thank you! Laurie Blair.”
It was old Laurie, Spencer said.
“Laurie is the one with the imagination and always coming up with crazy stories,” she said. “It seems a miracle to me that this note came back to me.”
Spencer, a lifelong biology teacher, has since befriended Kauterman, and hopes to visit her next time she’s in New Jersey.
“I believe that the chain of events that leads to a miracle begins when good-hearted people do good deeds. And that’s John,” he said.
“Anyone who cares about the environment is high in my book, and the fact that he cared enough to try to reach out and find me is pretty special.”
Kauterman says he “chokes her a little bit” when he hears Spencer speak well of him.
He says, the feeling is mutual.
“She spoke well and she’s just a nice lady, you know, just being able to give her something that she was grateful for makes the whole job worthwhile,” he said.
Spencer says her little sister would be “smiling and laughing” if she knew how her little prank was played after all these years.
“He had a great sense of humor,” Spencer said. “He never opened his mouth that it wasn’t a wisecrack, so I think he’ll be happy with these events.”
