Yesterday I got two emails from colleagues about my blog: Senior Editor Celeste McCauley wrote, “Maybe something for MW online…” and provided a link to a news story. Editor Nikki Notare simply said, “Maybe something for your blog?” with a link.
To the same story. Great minds really do think alike.
The story was about a note, a scrap of paper, rolled tightly and sealed in a green bottle, the type that had once held ginger ale. “Be excellent to yourself, dude,” it said, written clearly but with random capital letters and a slight shakiness: the still-developing penmanship of a child. In the bottom left corner, in smaller print, the author had written, “If you get this, call,” and left a telephone number.
It was the Thanksgiving after Superstorm Sandy, and all day, workers from the town of Patchogue on the south shore of Long Island had been clearing the beach of storm debris. Among the splintered wood of ruined docks, tangled fishing lines, tattered boating gear and heaps of trash, the bottle hadn’t stood out. Until one of the clean-up crew noticed something was inside.
Brian Waldron, a Patchogue parks department employee, called the number on the note and left a message. He soon received a call from Mimi Fery; upon hearing the note’s contents, she broke down in tears.
She recognized the line, “Be excellent,” from her daughter Sidonie’s favorite movie, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. A creative, artistic girl who loved to write poetry, Sidonie had tossed the note into the bay while visiting friends 12 years earlier, when she was just 10 years old. But in 2010, tragedy struck the Fery family. While at boarding school in Switzerland, Sidonie fell to her death from a cliff during a mountainside hike.
Brian delivered the note to Mimi, who was overjoyed to receive it. “I told her I felt like her daughter was looking down from heaven and wanted me to give her a call,” he told the Associated Press.
Now the note is kept in a bottle by Sidonie’s picture, a continuing comfort to her grieving family.
My colleagues aren’t the only ones I count on to find these kinds of stories. Have you heard or read about an incredible circumstance that defies the odds? Send the story to us!
