Scuba diving is an exciting experience. Going deep into the water can feel surreal. It’s like you’re suddenly in a different world.
Jennifer Dowker has always loved scuba diving.
She’s no stranger to the thrill it gives. And as a boat captain, she wants others to experience it. She offers scuba diving lessons in her area.
One day, Jennifer went to clean her boat.
When she got to the windows on the bottom of the Yankee Sunshine, her glass-bottomed boat, her eyes caught sight of something interesting. It was a bottle on the bottom of the river.
The mom thought it was just an ordinary bottle.
She told CNN:
“At first I thought it was just a cool bottle and then when I picked it up, when I was still under the water, I could read the word ‘this’ in the paper.”
It made her feel super excited.
“It was kind of like ‘Holy Smokes! We’ve got a message in a bottle here. Cool!,” she added.
By instinct, she swam back to the surface of the water.
She quickly showed what she found to her first mate. She also let a potential diving client see her precious discovery.
The bottle still had part of its cork inside.
Unfortunately, it was 2/3 filled with water. The note inside had started to deteriorate.
Using a small tool, Jennifer was able to fish out the note.
She was very careful in unrolling the paper. One wrong move and she could easily ruin it for good.
The note read:
“Will the person who finds this bottle return this paper to George Morrow Cheboygan, Michigan and tell where it was found?”
It was dated November 1926.
After realizing that the note was nearly a hundred years old, they were very careful in handling it. Rob Hemmer, the first mate, suggested putting the note in the freezer and allow it to dry there. He works at a local museum so he knows a thing or two about handling such a delicate note.
Jennifer went to work quickly.
She posted photos of the note on her company’s social media account. She knew that Cheboygan is not a big town. Her post had a huge chance of getting noticed by the right people.
She shared:
“I figured we’d track it down pretty quickly and that’d be the end of it all. So I kind of forgot about it because it was already late that night.”
Jennifer went to bed without thinking about the note.
She was so surprised to learn that her post went viral. She woke up to thousands of comments sharing tips on how to find the person.
Running her diving school, Jennifer knew that finding George Morrow’s family wouldn’t be easy. Then, something unexpected happened.
Michele Primeau, George Morrow’s daughter, reached out to her. After getting a call from a complete stranger, she decided to track down Jennifer.
The minute she saw the note, she knew it was her father’s.
She recognized the handwriting even though it was written years before she was born. The date on the note was her dad’s birthday.
Primeau told CNN:
“I can just see him going out and doing that because it was his birthday. I don’t know for sure. But it just sounds like something he would have done.”
George Morrow passed away in 1995 and the note brought back tons of good and happy memories.
Even though the note belonged to her father, Primeau wanted Jennifer to have it. She found it so she deserved to keep it. For her, finding it was enough to keep George’s name living on.
Watch the full story in the video below!
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Source: YouTube-Inside Edition, CNN, Facebook – Nautical North Family Adventures,
Fox 29
