What was hidden is found - 51 years later!
BROKEN BOW - Back in 1970, four co-workers at Rest Haven of Broken Bow signed a piece of paper and slipped it into a hollow in a cinder block as a new wall was being built. Fifty one years later, when that same wall was knocked down during demolition, amid the broken bricks and mortar, that piece of paper was found.
Judy Parker of Broken Bow was working her first job in 1970. She had started at Rest Haven in 1967, not long after she married Noel Parker. She washed dishes and helped pass trays to the residents.
Parker recalled that, because of new state regulations, a wall had to be built between the food preparation area and the dish washing station. She, along with three co-workers, Clara Teahon, Naomi Fox and Evelyn Hyatt found a slip of paper and signed it. They wrote their job description next to their names Clara was the cook. Naomi and Evelyn were waitresses.
“I put down a question mark,” Parker said. “I was being funny. I was a dishwasher and waitress. I was 21.” Each of them wrote down the year, 1970.
Rest Haven had different names over the years, most recently Golden Living Center and Broken Bow Care and Rehabilitation. In 2019, the facility closed. The buildings and land was purchased by Opportunity Land Investments Group. When Parker saw demolition of the building, she recalled the piece of paper she signed and mentioned it to a friend.
“I was talking about it at coffee one day. I was telling Darla (Myers). She told her husband, Bill.” Darla also told her brother-in-law, Chris. Both Bill and Chris are part of Myers Construction, the company doing the demolition. “They said they would do what they could,” Parker stated.”
Parker thought the paper had been put into a jar before being put into the wall so that’s what the crew was on the lookout for. When demolition reached the section of the wall in question, workers switched from machinery to sledge-hammers.
”They were real careful,” Chris Myers said. “It was pretty hard work, knocking it down by hand.”
During demolition, Parker took a photo of the kitchen area but the separating wall was already gone. At that time, she figured the paper was gone, too. Then she heard from Darla’s mother, Norma Fink. “They found a letter,” Parker was told.
“Joe Walmsley and Joseph Thomas found it,” Myers said.
What they found wasn’t in a jar after all. It was a small white envelope with yellow paper visible through the window. The return address read “Rest Haven of Broken Bow, Nebr. Inc., 68822. Parker said they thought maybe it was a bill or invoice of some kind.
“They let me open it,” Parker said.
On a small slip of paper with a header of Industrial Chemical Laboratories of Omaha, were the signatures. Parker is the only one of the four still living.
Parker is glad to have the piece of paper. It’s connects her to memories and people no longer with us. Yet it represents something even more meaningful for her, that there are people who go to great lengths to help others, even for something as small as a piece of paper.
“I want to acknowledge Myers Construction,” she said. “They went above and beyond. Things like that happen in a small town. I really appreciate them,” she said. “It’s awesome.”
Will there be another wall built on the site, another place to hide something new?
Chris Myers with Myers Construction and Land Opportunity Investments said he doesn’t have current plans to build on the site. “We’re cleaning it up and we’ll sell it at some point,” he told the Chief Monday. As to hearing about the paper and then Walmsley and Thomas finding it, Myers said, “I think it’s a neat story.”