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Messages float their way
A grieving family sends sentiments out to sea. Another family has a knack for finding them.
By Nick Johnson
Published June 10, 2007
Last summer John Daynard was snorkeling off Pass-A-Grille beach when he made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. It was a message in a mason jar covered in seaweed.
Daynard couldn’t read the letter because it was written in Spanish, but he was worried that it could be from someone in distress or even someone’s last words. He sent a photo of the letter to Neighborhood Times and asked for help in deciphering its meaning.
It turned out to be something less ominous, a prayer to La Virgen de la Caridad de la Cobre, the patroness of Cuba. It was cast into the sea in hopes of prosperity.
Daynard kept the jar and letter as a remembrance of the experience and then got caught up in everyday life. But his love for the water kept him and his family coming back to the beach. Recently they moved there.
Just a few weeks after they began renting a house on the other side of Pass-A-Grille beach, it happened again.
Another message tossed into the sea was discovered by a Daynard. This time it was in a bottle, scooped from their backyard canal by John’s 8 -year-old son Clint, just when it was about to sink to the bottom. “This thing was just about ready to go under, it was about three-quarters full,” Daynard said.
What were the chances? Clint was following in his father’s footsteps. Jumping up and down he yelled, “Daddy I found a message in a bottle.”
Still marveling at the chances, Daynard carefully removed the handwritten note and laid it out to dry. This one was in English and came complete with a name and phone number, not a prayer, but a message to someone who had passed away.
Donna Johnston wrote the message last summer to her stepfather, Harry Hooks, on the one-year anniversary of his death. It was one of three bottles thrown into the water in Gulfport on that same day, the other two belonging to her sister and mother.
The three women wrote the messages to Hooks, or Papa, as they called him, to tell them how much he was missed. They’ve done little things like that to stay in touch ever since he died Aug. 28, 2005.
“We just sat down and wanted to do something for him,” Johnston said. “We write messages on balloons, too, and we send them out all the time.”
This was the second time Johnston’s bottle was found. The first time a young man found it on the beach, maybe Treasure Island, she said, and threw it back for her while they talked on his cell phone.
Then it showed up again when Clint was on the dock in his new back yard, scanning the seaweed for crabs and minnows. But that wasn’t the end of the story.
Two days after Clint found her bottle Tropical Storm Barry came through town and bought the rain and wind that had been missing since last season. The conditions in Boca Ciega Bay were just right for delivering another bottle to the shore.
This one contained the message from Harry’s wife, Janice Hooks, and it was delivered to the beach outside of Russ Martinson’s Bermuda Bay condo.
“Any time we get a west wind like that we get a lot of junk on our beach,” Martinson said. He has found all sorts of things washed up on the beach there; a tackle box, a cooler, a canoe, but this was the first message in a bottle.
He called Janice and promised to return the bottle to the sea again the next time he and his wife go out on their boat.
“I’ve never been able to put any closure on anything yet, so it really made my day,” Janice said.
Janice and Harry had been married for 33 years when he passed away. She still visits the cemetery every day to talk to him and thinks the
bottles are how he stays in contact with her.
“It’s a wonderful feeling,” She said. “I’d like them to come back more often.”
If things continue this way for the Daynards, she might not have to wait long. John still has another son, Cameron, 7, and a daughter Kendra, 4, each waiting their turn to make a discovery.
Nick Johnson can be reached at nickjohnson@sptimes.com
or (727) 893-8361.
[Last modified June 8, 2007, 14:38:43]
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