A family from Oklahoma was delighted to find their late mother’s Bible after a man found it on his front lawn.
Terry Ward was mowing his front lawn last week when he noticed a Bible in his flower bed. “It rained all night, so it must have just been there for a little while because it wasn’t wet,” Ward said. “Just laying there with some screws and some bullets.”
Ward was moved to reunite it with the owners of the Bible after he saw the name Pearl Williams and a date of 1946 on it. “Who is Pearl Williams, and where does she live?” he recalled asking himself. “I asked City Hall, and they had no record of her.”
He then called the Nicoma Park Police Department, who found the Del City address inside the Bible. “So, I contacted the Del City Police Department, and they went by the address,” said Lt. Mike Weiss with the Nicoma Park Police Dept.
“Luckily, the Bible’s owner – her son – still lived at that address.” Lisa Bennett, Pearl’s daughter, said her family couldn’t believe that their late mother’s Bible had returned back home.
“It was very emotional,” Bennett said. “We lost my mom in October. So that was hard enough, and now to find out that I have her Bible gives me part of her.” She said there were many precious memories that her late mother tucked inside the Bible.
“Her wedding announcement was in the Bible from where she and my dad got married,” Bennett explained. “She kept different things that were very important to her.” She added, “She was a big part of my life, so when I lost her, I lost a lot of her,” she continued.
“Finding little bits and pieces and keeping little pieces of her helps me rebuild that little loss in my heart.” Bennett was thankful to the man who found the Bible and to the police for their investigative work. “This is the kind of story that makes it nice to be a police officer,” Weiss said. “It makes it nice to be an investigator that you can find somebody’s family Bible and return it to them.”
Police are conducting an investigation further to determine if the Bible and other things were stolen from Pearl’s home after she died.