Thorton Iowa Man Receives Postcard 32 1/2 Years Later

One of the few good things to come out of the coronavirus pandemic is all of the "feel good" stories. Here's another one from right here in good ole' Iowa.

When 65 year old, Anne Lovell mailed her older brother, 76 year old, Paul Willis a holiday postcard in December of 1987, she assumed he would receive it. Well, it did finally arrive in the mail last week, 32 1/2 year later.

Willis resides in the small Iowa town of Thornton, just west of I-35 and south of Clear Lake. Lovell lives in San Francisco, California, but had sent the postcard while on vacation, postmarked from Havasu Falls, Arizona. CNN has a photo of the strayed postcard, reading "A picture is worth 1,000 words, Happy Holidays, Love Ann." - On the front, is a picture of Lovell sitting at a picnic table in front of a waterfall with the greeting "Happy Holidays".

So how did the postcard finally turn up? Willis and his sister were curious. Willis decided to call the Thorton post office and they said that many post offices were doing a "deep cleaning" because of COVID-19, so maybe that's how it was found. Then someone was nice enough to put a new stamp on it, postmarked from Des Moines, then "lo and behold", it turned up in his mailbox and Willis got his much belated holiday wishes.

As the saying goes, "All's well, that ends well".