Two Tennessee women bought the letters, all 21 of them, for $88.
Two best friends love to go hunting for antiques, but they never expected to find a stack of lost love letters at a quaint little shop in Tennessee.
It was a stack of love letters written between a sailor and his girlfriend during World War II.
“Once we started reading ‘em we couldn’t stop,” Lindsy Wolke told Inside Edition. “He was scared and he missed his family and everything back home.”
Elias Maxwell was serving his nation in Hawaii and Japan. His sweetheart Ilaine was back home in Blackwood, New Jersey.
She always would mention that she wanted to be his wife, ending her letters, "your wife, hopefully soon.'
Lindsy and Megan Grant bought the letters, all 21 of them, for $88.
“He loved her a lot. You could feel the emotion every time we read we'd just melt what they would talk about how they would talk to each other,” Wolke said.
The ladies were intrigued. What ever happened to those young lovers? Did they ever marry?
Their search started online and ended 854 miles from home in Clementon, New Jersey, where the family of those wartime lovers lived.
Turns out, Elias and Ilaine did marry in 1948. Ilaine passed away in 2015, at age 89. Elias died in 1993, at age 66
They had four children together: Pat, Jean, Tom and Barbara, whom the friends from Tennessee met.
Reading the love letters was a window into their parents lives.
One of the letters had a lipstick kiss from Ilaine, prompting Tom to say, “If you showed me that and said, did my mom do this, put these lips on the page, I would say, ‘no.’ That's a part of my mom I didn’t know."
The long lost love letters have now finally found their way back home.
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