Mystery solved. Mostly.
A couple of weeks ago, two already opened, taped-together letters addressed to a Dorothy Bartos arrived at the Chicago home of Martha Rodriguez. The letters, from a sailor at the San Diego Navy base, were dated 1945, near the end of World War II.
The Chicago Tribune reported on the letters with the hopes of tracking down their intended recipient, and it wasn't long before it succeeded: Dorothy Bartos Carlberg's son spotted the story and reached out to the newspaper after confirming his mother once had the same address as Rodriguez.
On Wednesday, Rodriguez handed over the letters to 85-year-old Carlberg, who was a teenager at the time she sent the letters to Al Fragakis, whom she'd met in Chicago before he left for duty.
"We were friends but we weren't hanky-panky or anything," Carlberg, who now lives in an assisted living facility in Whitewater, Wisconsin, told WGN.
Carlberg went on to marry Victor Carlberg, an Army man, five years after she exchanged letters with Fragakis, WGN reports. Her husband died two years ago. Fragakis has yet to be located since the letters were found.
Last year, another pair of long-lost World War II letters made their way home. Chris Kunellis had written the messages to his wife while he was serving as a soldier in Italy in 1944. Their son, Chuck, received the letters 69 years later.
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