In 1953, during his first trip away from his Illinois home, Alan Ball sent his family a postcard from the United Nations headquarters in New York, the postage for which was 2 cents.
Mr. Ball, who was in high school at the time, bought the postcard on his way to Puerto Rico, where he planned to spend the summer at his aunt’s home. He had taken a train to New York, and visited the U.N. in his spare time before his flight to Puerto Rico.
“We are now in the U.N. bldg. — extremely modern throughout,” he wrote in neat cursive on the postcard, which displays one of the U.N. headquarter buildings on the front. He promised to “write next from P.R.” and signed it, “Love to all, Alan.”
But the postcard never arrived at his family home in Ottawa, Ill.
Mr. Ball, who is now 88, had “totally forgotten” about it until Wednesday, when a letter carrier handed it to him in Sandpoint, Idaho, where he has lived for more than 30 years.
“That 2 cents did a lot of work,” said Mr. Ball, a retired emergency room doctor, during a phone interview on Saturday. “It has mostly brought a chuckle to me because, you know, who gets their mail returned after 72 years?”
The postcard, an update from Mr. Ball on his travels, provided the kind of quick message one might send in a text or a social media post today.
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The post Postcard Sent From the U.N. Is Returned to Sender After 72 Years appeared first on New York Times.
