The Postal Service is trying to deliver a letter nearly 70 years after it was mailed
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It's been almost 70 years, and the U.S. Postal Service is still attempting to deliver a letter mailed in 1945.
The Associated Press reports that the letter was sent by Myron C. Cook, an Army sergeant in New York, to Mr. and Mrs. Sensabaugh on Washington Avenue in Muskegon, Michigan. The letter never made it to the intended destination, and arrived in Muskegon last year, after an indeterminate (and unexplained) detour in Minneapolis. The house where the Sensabaughs lived is empty, and since the letter could not be delivered, it was placed in a "dead mail" pile. A local carrier took an interest and started the search again, and officials have asked a local historian to research both the Sensabaugh and Cook families in an attempt to track a relative down.
No one is sure just what Cook was going to share with the Sensabaugh family in his letter; it has apparently never been opened, and that's how it's going to stay for the time being. "We're not going to disturb it until we can see if we can find the family first," says Veronica Mauseth, secretary to the Muskegon postmaster.
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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