“We will use every lawful means available to assemble the strongest case possible and bring justice to Kristi Johnson and her family,” said SMPD Chief James T. Butts Jr. Postcard mailed in ‘57 arrives last week in SM
Maurice and Josephine Molloy won’t get to read the postcard their grandson sent them in June of 1957 from Dobbs Ferry, New York.
They’ve since moved on. Instead, that job went to Santa Monica resident Fred Fink, who now lives at the Molloy’s old address. Fink spotted the yellowed postcard with its three-cent “International Navy Review” stamp mixed in amid his usual junk mail offerings and magazines on March 31.
“Dear Grandpa and Grandma,” the postcard begins. “We’re both having a wonderful time. Marry and Bob are being very sweet. We’ll give you all the details when we come home Wed. We went to the Empire State Bld. yesterday. It’s tremendous. Lots of love.”
The signature is unintelligible. On the front was a skyline picture of a Manhattan of a different era.
“I just about fell over,” said Fink, a 28-year resident of the 1970s-era building. Fink asked neighbors if anyone knew the Molloys, but no one did, not even the oldest residents. The Daily Press searched unsuccessfully for relatives of the Molloys still living in the Los Angeles area. Efforts to identify the grandchild were unsuccessful.
The first names of Grandpa and Grandma Molloy were retrieved with the help of Robert Knowles, a spokesman for the L.A. County Assessor, who found them on the deed of the Molloys’ 18th Street bungalow.
Fink’s apartment complex now sits on the lot where the little bungalow Maurice and Josephine Molloy bought in 1928 once stood. They sold the house in 1957, the same year the postcard was mailed.
Thirteen years later, the little house was plowed down.
A spokesman from the United States Postal Service said this type of thing happens often.
“This postcard was probably delivered to that address in 1957,” said spokesman George Marsh. “And somehow it got back into the mail stream.”
Marsh said that people often hold onto old postcards for sentimental reasons. After a person dies their descendants will often go through the old boxes of correspondence. And sometimes someone else finds an old card and mails it, not knowing it had already been delivered.
But not everyone is so sure. Ninfa Llamas, a mail carrier of 17-years who delivered the card this millennium, said that before Monday she’d never seen anything like it.
“I don’t know why or how I got this card,” said Llamas, pointing out that she was two-years old when it was sent. “I turned it over and said, ‘Wow. This is incredible.’”
Back in 1957 mail came by train. After the card was dropped into the postal stream on June 24, it could have taken as long as two weeks to make it to Los Angeles and, finally, into a Santa Monica mail carrier’s bag.
Faster than the Pony Express, to be sure, but certainly no air mail. And no FedEx, either.
As the little card made its 46-year trip across the country the nation stayed busy.
Eisenhower wrapped up his second term and Kennedy came into office. Eight other presidents followed, leading our nation into a total of five wars. America went to the moon. Mohammed Ali fought his way to the top and a Polish person was elected pope. The Berlin wall came down. The two World Trade Center towers went up and came tumbling down.
With sliced bread a mere 29 years old, eager inventors embarked on a series of technological creations. Others include the zip code, Pacemakers, artificial hearts, contact lenses and Viagra, eight tracks, cassettes, CDs and mini discs, hand-held calculators, personal computers, cell phones, the Internet and the hackey sack
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 5, 2003. Read the original PDF.