A package mailed 33 years ago to the residents of 7500 Beluga Circle on Anchorage’s east side finally arrived on Monday.
The manila envelope, addressed to a “Mr. & Mrs. James Wilson” in October 1978, was sent from a cousin of James Wilson in Atlanta.
James Wilson passed away this summer. His wife Betty now lives in Arkansas. The package probably still would have been long-lost, had it not been for Betty’s friend of 40 years, Norma McDonald, who now lives in Betty’s old house.
With Betty on the phone, McDonald opened the package. Pages of letters and genealogy from James’ side of the family were inside.
Betty said she wasn’t even sure the package had been mailed, and hadn’t thought about it for decades. She didn’t care much what was inside, but the story of how it turned up made her laugh and she wished her husband was still around so he could hear it.
“I was just amused more than anything else,” she said. “All the coincidences that have taken place in this instance. Norma is living in my house. Only because of that did it ever get to who it was supposed to get to. Had someone else been living in the house it would not have been given to me.”
Postal workers in Anchorage have no idea where the package has been all these years. They say there was no way to track it.
Betty’s daughter still lives in Alaska and will be visiting her mother in Arkansas for Christmas, she will hand deliver the package so it “won’t take another 33 years.”
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