MUSKEGON, Mich. (May 14, 2014)– A mystery letter found in a Muskegon post office dates back to the World War II era.
Now, officials are working to track down the relatives of either who sent it or who it was sent to.
It’s not very often the post office can’t get a letter back to the sender, but nearly 70 years later they never expected they would come across a letter with such history.
Muskegon Post Master Bill Rowe says in his 20 years of working for the U.S. Postal Service, this is a first.
Rowe says a mail carrier who is a veteran himself brought it to management’s attention after he saw it was from an army base, knowing this letter had more to it.
Over the old stamp, was a post mark from Minneapolis from September 2013, who or why someone put it back in the mail stream isn’t clear.
Rowe says it looks like the envelope hasn’t been opened, and it even has old tape still over the seal.
Addressed once to a Mr. and Mrs. Sensabaugh on Washington Ave. in Muskegon, that house now sits empty and has for some time.
The letter came from Sgt. Myron Cook from an APO base out of New York. Rowe says they did some research with the help of Richard Mullally, who focuses on the history of World War II veterans in Muskegon County and found that the Sensabaugh family had a son in the Navy.
They learned Edward Lee Sensabaugh was a graduate of Muskegon Sr. High school and joined the Navy in 1945. He passed away in 2010.
Rowe just hopes they will be able to get the letter to either relatives of the Sensabaughs or Cooks, leaving it up to them to open of the history inside.
“I don’t think that Sgt. Cook would have ever thought that letter would ever get that much attention all these years later,” he said.
Another clue Mullally found is that the Sensabaughs moved south to Florida during and after the war.
He also found a Myron C. Cook, not necessarily the one who wrote the letter, entered the Army in Kalamazoo. Myron and his wife lived out their lives in North Muskgeon but both have since passed away.
