Found, a sailor’s tender love letters lost for 45 years
Distraught widow delighted over return
SHE was distraught when hundreds of love letters from her sailor husband went missing when they moved home.
Marjory Day was too embarrassed to admit to her family she had mislaid the letters, written by her husband David while at sea in the 1950s.
But now, 45 years after she last saw them, the letters have resurfaced. A builder found them as he renovated the couple’s former home in Dunfermline, Fife.
Mrs Day, 84, and her late husband wrote to each other during his 12 years in the Navy in the 1950s and 1960s.
But when they moved house in the 1970s, she left the letters behind. She did go back to look for them but could not find them and assumed they had been lost.
Last month, however, builder Alistair Hogg, 55, came across them in the floor space of the attic while renovating the house.
Mrs Day, who still lives in the town, said: ‘I thought I had lost them years ago and I didn’t even tell my family. I felt so embarrassed, so guilty. But now, since these letters have come back to me, it seems like fate.’
Mr Day, who died last year after suffering from Alzheimer’s, joined the Navy at the age of 16 in 1954.
Mrs Day said: ‘Telling my family about the letters was a big surprise to them. I nearly fainted when I saw them. My heart was thumping. His letters were always about how much he loved me. He wrote every night.’
One of the letters read: ‘My very own darling Marjory, hello my wonderful wife, it’s your very own Dave again and I hope you are quite well. I’m alright my darling... missing and needing you so very much. PS you for me, me for you always, I love you.’
Originally from Gloucestershire, Mr Day met his future wife when his ship docked in Rosyth, Fife, and he went for a night out at the Kinema Ballroom. The couple had four children.
Mr Hogg said: ‘I’m just grateful the letters are back with their rightful owner as if I hadn’t found them, they probably would have been lost for ever.’
Mrs Day said: ‘I’m ploughing through the letters and it’s so nice to remember how he used to think of me before the Alzheimer’s.
‘It makes me cry every time I read these letters, but it makes me happy to see how much he loved me.
‘I’m so thankful to Alistair.’