Time capsule discovered in old home

A message shared between a mother and son is discovered and returned to its rightful owner 69 years after it was written.

John O’Connell, 84, had no trouble opening the bottle but reading the message brought him to tears. So he asked his wife Marie.

“Left bottle here December 28th 1940. Look us up,” Marie read.

The handwritten note was authored by his mother, Katherine, who at the time was 51 years old. John was 16.

“It wasn’t my idea, It was her idea so I said ok let’s try it,” John said.

The letter simply identifies the two — name, age, height and weight. It was sealed in an olive jar and concealed behind a wall in their home on Lakeshore Boulevard.

“I had good times there. It was nice. We had a small store up the street we’d go up there and buy candy,” John said.

The house now belongs to handyman Vince Samuelle, who found the bottle while remodeling the kitchen.

“I really wasn’t expecting to find anything in the walls,” Samuelle said.

It’s not his first bottle. Vince found a 100-year-old bottle of Scotch while remodeling another house.

“I guess it was put up there for good luck,” Samuelle said.

The Scotch remains in his basement but the spirit in the O’Connell bottle could not be kept hidden. Vince and his girlfriend tracked down John through the phone book.

“I got a little bit of history on the house. I got to meet him. We walked through the back yard found a lot of things out that I didn’t know about the property,” Samuelle said.

Marie also enjoyed the trip down memory lane. There is more to understand ,even after 25 years of marriage.

“It was kinda like nostalgic. I was looking around and dreaming of when these three or four brothers were playing in the yard,” Marie said.

Once behind the wall, John never gave that bottle another thought.

Nearly 70 years later though, that bottle gave him back childhood memories he forgot.

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