Shedd Aquarium postcard arrives 53 years later
BY KIM JANSSEN Staff Reporter kjanssen@suntimes.com April 27, 2012 6:36PM
The postcard Scott McMurry’s parents mailed him from Chicago in the summer of 1958 — which his mailman finally delivered this week.
Updated: May 30, 2012 8:14AM
“We’ll probably be home before this gets there!”
Those were the words teenager Scott McMurry’s mom scrawled across the top of a postcard from Chicago in the summer of 1958.
She didn’t know how right she was.
The postcard depicting the Shedd Aquarium finally arrived at McMurry’s Virginia home on Tuesday — 53 years after his mom mailed it.
“I recognized my mother’s handwriting immediately,” said McMurry, now 71. “It’s incredible.”
Now the Shedd Aquarium has offered to give him a tour of the attraction his late parents visited more than half a century ago.
“Hopefully I’ll be able to come next week,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
The postcard was addressed to Clairmont Ave. in Decatur, Ga., — where McMurry grew up. But last week it showed up in Elizabeth Fulcher’s mailbox on Clairmont Lane in South Daytona, Fla.
Fulcher realized something was strange when she saw the 2 cent stamp in the top right corner.
She posted a picture of the postcard on Facebook, and her friends helped track down McMurry, a historian with the Justice Department.
“Without the Internet, I’d never have received it,” McMurry said.
Just why the snail mail took so long to arrive remains a mystery, but an April 2012 Michigan postmark suggests it was recently mailed a second time, McMurry said.
