Losing one’s personal belongings can be alarming as, most times, people can’t explicitly say how the item got lost. There has been a lot of mystery surrounding some missing items, and losing a wallet only to have it resurface 65 years later isn’t an exception, as this is the case of the late Floyd Culbreth.
Culbreth lost her wallet in 1958 during a visit to the Plaza Theater in Atlanta; however, the purse was found behind a wall during the cinema’s renovation six and half decades later in 2003. Upon its discovery, Chris Escobar, the current owner of the theatre, sensed the historical significance of the retrieved item and took it upon himself to diligently track down the rightful owner.
Mom loses her wallet in 1958 in a movie theatre; it’s returned 65 years later
During a discussion with The Washington Post, Escobar revealed that the wallet was not the first lost item that had been found in the theater, and just like all others, he quickly initiated the process of locating the owner. However, he mentioned that locating the purse’s owner proved difficult due to the limited amount of information.
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“What I usually do is find the person whose wallet it is on social media if I can,” Escobar told the news outlet. “But normally, a wallet is found the same day or within a few days, and we reach out right away. This has been hiding away for almost seven decades, and [the wallet’s owner,] Mrs. Roy Culbreth, as she was always referred to by her husband’s name instead of her actual name, wasn’t on social media.”
The wallet owner’s daughter gets emotional after getting her mom’s wallet back
After numerous attempts, Escobar discovered that the initial owner had passed away in 2005 at the age of 87, but her daughter, Thea Culbreth Chamberlain, was genuinely delighted to reclaim a piece of her mother’s history. Upon receiving her mother’s belongings, Chamberlain recounted how her mother lost the wallet when she was just six years old during a shared visit to the theater.
She also expressed how happy she was about the discovery. “I don’t even know how to say how flabbergasted I was, and it took a while for it to sink in,” Chamberlain confessed as she held the wallet. “Oh, my goodness, this is hitting me more than I realized it would. She was in there…I know it sounds kind of hokey, but she really was.”