Mail arrives 481/2 years late Bangor woman mystified by 1953 postcard sent to late relative

BANGOR – Marion Dearborn, 92, received something a bit unusual in her mail this month – a postcard mailed almost half a century ago.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Dearborn said Wednesday of the postcard addressed to her late mother-in-law, Jeannie Dearborn. “I kept looking at it and looking at it. You just wonder what possibly could have happened to it. It’s a wonder that it made it here at all.”

The cancellation mark on the back of the postcard shows it was mailed on June 26, 1953. Though 48 years late, it arrived at its intended destination in excellent condition. It had no creases or tears, showed no sign of water damage and still bore the original 2-cent stamp used to mail it.

Where it has been for 481/2 years remains a mystery.

“If postcards could only talk,” said Arline Sprague of Bucksport, a close friend who’s staying with Dearborn. “I’d love to know where it’s been all these years.”

The postcard was mailed to Jeannie Dearborn by Katherine Herrick, a friend who was traveling south in the summer of 1953 and stopped to listen to the 47-bell carillon in Luray, Va., commonly known as the Luray Singing Tower. Its official name is the Belle Brown Northcott Memorial in memory of Col. T.C. Northcott’s wife.

“We were able to hear these Thurs. p.m. We are in Nahunta [Ga.] tonight,” Herrick wrote to her friend back in Bangor on the postcard picturing the tower.

According to Bangor Postmaster Steven Hathaway, mail occasionally is misplaced, sometimes not resurfacing until decades later.

“Usually it’s because it fell down behind something, like a piece of machinery, and is found when equipment is being modernized,” Hathaway said.

Hathaway added that the Postal Service’s sorting machinery scans for special codes, but doesn’t recognize the denominations of various stamps. When local letter carriers receive long-lost mail with insufficient postage, they usually deliver it without stamping it “postage due.”

He said lost mail has been found in Bangor twice since he became postmaster 12 years ago, one item dating back to the late 1950s and another from the mid-1960s. “I usually enclose it with a letter apologizing and explaining what happened and that there was no way that we could have known it was lost, that it just happened to fall behind something,” Hathaway said. The postcard Dearborn received came with no such letter.

The fact that Dearborn’s postcard eventually was delivered to the right family can be attributed to at least three things: There have been Dearborns on Third Street since about the turn of the century; Marion Dearborn has lived in the same house since the early 1930s; and her regular mail carrier, who knows his route well, recognized the surname of the intended recipient.

“I think that if it wasn’t him, it probably would have been tossed,” she said.

“I’ve lived in this house for 70 years,” said Dearborn. She is the matriarch of a clan that includes four children, 12 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, some of whom reside in Maine and others who are scattered across the United States.

She moved into the trim white house on Third Street after marrying Lloyd Dearborn, who died more than 20 years ago. Her in-laws lived next door. Her father, Daniel Lord, and his brother ran a grocery store called Lord Brothers Store on Hammond Street, at the site now occupied by Animal Crackers Pet Supply Co.

The neighborhood where Dearborn has chosen to remain has seen many changes over the decades.

“Years ago, it used to be mostly families, a lot of young people with kids who grew up with my kids. Now [the former single-family homes] are all broken up into apartments,” she said. As a result, there tends to be a lot of turnover, making it more difficult to get acquainted with neighbors.

Though she has traveled extensively, she said she never had the desire to move away and today leads an active and full life that includes, among other things, making crafts for the Unitarian Universalist Church and YWCA fund-raisers.

Smartly dressed in beige tweed slacks and a blouse and knit cardigan in matching colors, she credits her longevity to exercise and good genes (her father lived to the age of 94).

“I didn’t drive so I walked everywhere,” said Dearborn, adding that pushing babies in carriages is a workout in itself. She also used to ski on the site now occupied by the James F. Doughty Middle School on Fifth Street.

Dearborn’s friend Sprague has a different theory.

“She laughs a lot,” Sprague said. “With Marion, it’s that she has a good sense of humor and that she loves people.”