The "Love Conquers All!" Story

 It was an ordinary day.  Once again reading about love letters that had been found years after they had been written.  It was back in August of 2015 that I posted a story about a young girl who found 109 love letters at a vintage market in Chicago and paid $75 for the chance to read about the love affair between Miss Dasiy and John.  The letters were written between 1905 and 1910 and ended up in the marriage between Miss Daisy and John.  The couple ended up living in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania which is why Miss Steph Knudson notified our local newspaper and told her story about the love letters to one of the reporters at the newspaper that eventually led to the story in the newspaper.  I did a bit more searching and ended up talking with Steph about her "find" and also published a few stories on my blog.  Well, a few weeks ago another story made the news about an old barrel of love letters that had been found in a home on South Queen Street in downtown Lancaster.  Story goes back to 2004 when Alfredo Carrion Jr. bought a house on South Queen Street and was cleaning the third-floor attic.  It was there that he found an old barrel with letters from the 1940s and 1950s.  The letters were written by an American soldier in the Army who was stationed in Germany.  Mr. Carrion decided to read a few and found that the letter writer was sending letters to his wife.  Mr. Carrion said, "I noticed he was writing to his wife.  They're beautifully written; you could tell he was madly in love with his wife."  At the time, Mr. Carrion threw everything in the barrel away...but the letters.  He said, "I didn't have the heart to throw them away.  These belong to somebody, so maybe I could find who they belong to."  He spent the next 15 years trying to find whom they might have belonged to and where he could find them.  He scoured deeds to the house and asked neighbors.  He Googled the names on the letters.  Then this past January, while up in his third floor, he noticed the letters once again.  They were calling to him.  It has been 8 years since he last tried to find the owner of the letters.  He thought he should give it one last try.  He posted a photo of the stack of letters on Facebook asking if someone might be able to help him.  Then, a friend of a friend of a friend realized that he used to live beside the family of the man who wrote the letters.  Mr. Carrion got the name and found that "The 98 letters" were from Ray Sweigart to his wife Miriam.  Mr. Carrion's friend contacted the family for him and explained the situation.  

Ray Sweigart and his wife Miriam.

At first they weren't quite sure if it was legitimate or not, but they eventually believed that Mr. Carrion had a packet of love letters they never knew existed.  Mr. Carrion made a visit to Mr. Sweigart's daughter, Vicki Ellmaker, and granddaughter, Melanie Bachman.  They lived in nearby Columbia, PA.  The special delivery by Mr. Carrion was accompanied with a bouquet of flowers.  Mr. Carrion was invited into their home and when they saw the letters they had tears in their eyes.  Mr. Carrion said he was sorry it took so many years to find them, but the letters have now found a home.  He took a photo to put on his Facebook page to update his friends who were following the adventure online.  Melanie said, "Every letter starts with 'Dear Honey' and is signed with, 'May God bless you and keep you, love always, Ray.'"  Vicki's grandmother was the one who owned the house on South Queen Street.  The house had changed hands several times before Mr. Carrion bought it in 2004.  Those letters remained in that house for all these years and no one every threw they away.  Amazing!!  Melanie sent a text to thanking Mr. Carrion for faithfully hanging onto the letters and tracking down the owner.  And...what made the whole story even better was that Vicki is a retired postal employee of 30 years.  Ray and Miriam were married August 23, 1948 and were married for more than 50 years.  He was an intelligent officer in Germany during the war.  They had three children: Vicki, Keith and Craig.  Vicki is the only living child.  Ray worked at RCA in the TV department as well as teaching courses at Franklin & Marshall College.  Miriam died May 19, 1999 and Ray died December 3, 2016.  He kept a photograph of the love of his life next to his bed untill the day he died.  Vicki said, "He loved my Grandma so much."  Mr. Carrion is so glad he didn't give up trying to find the owner of the love letters.  "You could feel the appreciation, the love.  They were missing something.  I was missing something, too.  It felt like the letter made it home."  Amen.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.