thedrifter
09-26-08, 03:43 PM
Missing photo album makes its way back to Portsmouth owner
PORTSMOUTH
In this case, one man's trash really was another man's treasure.
After Nevada Smith drove away from a Portsmouth parking lot last month with his family photo album on top of his Dodge minivan, he suspected that the album had not lasted long on the slippery roof of his car.
That evening, Aug. 26, Alonzo Sparrow was walking in Portsmouth near the turning lane that goes into the Downtown Tunnel. He spotted the white album lying in the gutter alongside a picture of what he said was a beautiful woman. He tucked the photo back in the book and, not knowing what else to do, put it in a nearby trash can beside a bus stop on Court Street. Then he walked back to his sister's house.
Still later that day, another man who prefers to remain anonymous, sat in that same bus stop, waiting.
With nothing to do and time on his hands, he looked into the trash can hoping to find a newspaper.
When he looked and pulled a paper out, he saw the photo album underneath.
He took the album on the bus ride home to Norfolk and, days later, brought it to a branch of the Norfolk Public Library asking them to keep it in case someone came along looking for it.
This past Tuesday – a month after his find –- he saw an article in The Pilot telling the sad story of Smith, a lieutenant commander and search-and-rescue pilot in the Coast Guard, and the heirloom album he had asked his mother to send from Roscoe, Ill., so he could copy some pictures and use them to illustrate a book his grandfather had written about his experiences in the Marines in World War II.
The man went back to the library, retrieved the album he had found and called Smith at nearly 11 p.m. this past Wednesday evening.
"The call woke me up," Smith said. "So I go downstairs, check the number and don't recognize it and he doesn't leave a message."
For a second, Smith nearly let it go. Lots of people had called him in the days after the story ran. None led him to his book.
"I called him back and an old man answers and he says, "I've got an album.' "
Dubious, Smith posed questions until the man on the other end said one of the pictures had been taken in Morrisonville, Ill.
"I immediately got cotton mouth and my hair shoots up on my head," Smith said.
He hopped into his car, stopped for a fill-up and at an ATM, and then surprised the oldster at midnight with the $250 reward that Smith had promised on fliers he'd placed all over Portsmouth.
The man who found Smith's album lives in a retirement home in Norfolk and could not believe his windfall.
The album finder spent time both in the Air Force and the Marine Corps and had an uncle in the Marines who fought on Okinawa, just like Smith's grandfather had.
"It was a pretty weird coincidence," said Smith, who said he'd never been so abruptly happy in his life.
Krys Stefansky, (757) 446-2732, krys.stefansky@pilotonline.com [1]
Jamesetta M. Walker, assistant features editor The Virginian-Pilot 150 W. Brambleton Ave. Norfolk VA 23510 (757) 446-2211 (office) (757) 446-2963 (fax) HamptonRoads.com PilotOnline.com
Ellie
PORTSMOUTH
In this case, one man's trash really was another man's treasure.
After Nevada Smith drove away from a Portsmouth parking lot last month with his family photo album on top of his Dodge minivan, he suspected that the album had not lasted long on the slippery roof of his car.
That evening, Aug. 26, Alonzo Sparrow was walking in Portsmouth near the turning lane that goes into the Downtown Tunnel. He spotted the white album lying in the gutter alongside a picture of what he said was a beautiful woman. He tucked the photo back in the book and, not knowing what else to do, put it in a nearby trash can beside a bus stop on Court Street. Then he walked back to his sister's house.
Still later that day, another man who prefers to remain anonymous, sat in that same bus stop, waiting.
With nothing to do and time on his hands, he looked into the trash can hoping to find a newspaper.
When he looked and pulled a paper out, he saw the photo album underneath.
He took the album on the bus ride home to Norfolk and, days later, brought it to a branch of the Norfolk Public Library asking them to keep it in case someone came along looking for it.
This past Tuesday – a month after his find –- he saw an article in The Pilot telling the sad story of Smith, a lieutenant commander and search-and-rescue pilot in the Coast Guard, and the heirloom album he had asked his mother to send from Roscoe, Ill., so he could copy some pictures and use them to illustrate a book his grandfather had written about his experiences in the Marines in World War II.
The man went back to the library, retrieved the album he had found and called Smith at nearly 11 p.m. this past Wednesday evening.
"The call woke me up," Smith said. "So I go downstairs, check the number and don't recognize it and he doesn't leave a message."
For a second, Smith nearly let it go. Lots of people had called him in the days after the story ran. None led him to his book.
"I called him back and an old man answers and he says, "I've got an album.' "
Dubious, Smith posed questions until the man on the other end said one of the pictures had been taken in Morrisonville, Ill.
"I immediately got cotton mouth and my hair shoots up on my head," Smith said.
He hopped into his car, stopped for a fill-up and at an ATM, and then surprised the oldster at midnight with the $250 reward that Smith had promised on fliers he'd placed all over Portsmouth.
The man who found Smith's album lives in a retirement home in Norfolk and could not believe his windfall.
The album finder spent time both in the Air Force and the Marine Corps and had an uncle in the Marines who fought on Okinawa, just like Smith's grandfather had.
"It was a pretty weird coincidence," said Smith, who said he'd never been so abruptly happy in his life.
Krys Stefansky, (757) 446-2732, krys.stefansky@pilotonline.com [1]
Jamesetta M. Walker, assistant features editor The Virginian-Pilot 150 W. Brambleton Ave. Norfolk VA 23510 (757) 446-2211 (office) (757) 446-2963 (fax) HamptonRoads.com PilotOnline.com
Ellie