I love stories like this. A woman buys a used paperback at a bookstore and inside is more than she could have imagined. Out falls a love letter from a young man in the military to his sweetheart back home. Used books are always full of surprises. (original article)
Video transcript
One day, Sandi Blood bought a paperback novel at a used book store in Garden City.
When she opened it, this fell out.
It’s a love letter, dated November, 1951, from Army Private Gilles LeBlanc, stationed in Japan, to his girlfriend Carole in Toronto, Ontario.
Sandi was enchanted.
Sandi: “I’m a hopeless romantic, as most of my friends will tell you and my husband, too.”
Much of the letter was about Gille’s Army life prior to shipping out to Korea, but there’s also this:
“Honey you can’t realize how much I love you and think and dream about being with you. It’s hurting me all over.”
Then he wrote about wedding preparations.
Sandi just had to track him down.
Sandi: “I reached out to some Facebook friends. I figured that seems to be how things get done nowadays.”
Well, it didn’t take long.
One of Sandi’s friends, a genealogy expert, saw the Facebook post, called her and asked for Gille’s military ID number, which was on the envelope.
From there, it took only a few minutes to track down the now 84-year-old LeBlanc in Royal Oak, Michigan.
Gilles LeBlanc: “I feel wonderful about it. I think the lady in South Carolina is just wonderful.”
Sandi called Gilles and the two chatted for 45 minutes about the letter he wrote to the girl that became his wife after the war.
Gilles: “You get a 30 day leave at the end of your tour, so when I came home in December for 30 days, we got married,” LeBlanc said.
Yes, Gilles and Carole got married and had six kids.
And then they got divorced back in the 1970s.
So, maybe not have been quite the storybook ending Sandi had in mind, but she says Gilles is delightful and a newfound friend.
SandiL “He wants the letter back, so we’re going to find a way to get that back to him.”
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