The waters of the TCI have made one lady extremely happy, not for swimming in, or soaking on any of the #1 turquoise beaches in the TCI, but because the waters for half a century, clutched precious memories of her father.
A New Hampshire woman said she is the recipient of a bottled message that her father threw into the sea more than 50 years ago that was found off the coast of Turks and Caicos.
Paula Pierce, owner of the Beachcomber Motel in Hampton Beach, N.H., said she was confused when she first received a call about the bottle, which traveled thousands of miles, but she immediately recognized her father’s writing when she read the message herself.
Pierce said the more she looked at it, the more it jumped off the page at her that it was her father’s writing.
The bottled message read “Return to 419 Ocean Boulevard and receive a $150 reward from Tina.
Pierce said she hadn’t known about the bottle, but her father apparently told her husband about it a few years ago.
Pierce believes her father really did it to tease her mom, because she was the business savvy person, and $150 back then was a lot of money.
“It’s shocking to think it’s been in the ocean, 40 to 50 years, it’s shocking it didn’t get crushed — it made it all that way — its mind boggling,” Pierce said.
A report in the Boston Globe, noted that Clint Buffington, a teaching assistant at the University of Kentucky’s department of writing, rhetoric and digital media, found the message in a bottle and after some research, he returned the message — written 50 years ago — to Ms. Pierce, the daughter of the person who wrote it. The bottle traveled from Hampton Beach, N.H., to the coast of the Turks and Caicos Islands, where Buffington found it.
Buffington has made it a hobby to look for messages in bottles: “It’s a romantic, whimsical gesture, and I love being the recipient of that gesture,” said the 26 year old Buffington.
