We all have our prized possessions which we hold on to dearly and won’t part with them even if we are offered millions.
Mal Osborn was given a varsity letter jacket from the University of Maine as a track runner, and for 60 years he wore it until he lost it in October.
92-year-old Osborn who lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, since 1964, told his daughter Beverly Amick that he couldn’t find his jacket.
Amick and some relatives checked on Osborn’s usual routes thinking that he may have placed it on his car and it had fallen off while he was driving. But they still couldn’t find it and so Amick took to social media to help locate it.
She shared a picture of Osborn on Facebook wearing the jacket at a Master’s swimming competition in 2016 and asked for help finding it. “This man would be ecstatic if this well-loved (sic) jacket was found,” she wrote in the post that was shared more than 1,000 times.
Osborn was a long-distance track and cross-country runner and took part in events from 1949-52 at the University of Maine. He said the letter jacket had become a part of him after so many years. “I just know how much it meant to him,” Amick said, “I was going to do everything in my power to find it.”
Amick soon got an email from a woman who lived near her father who found the coat covered with leaves in her yard.
Osborn was delighted to be reunited with his favorite jacket and has been wearing it since Amick had it dry-cleaned and returned it to him. “As challenging as this year has been, this has given us some hope,” she said.
“I appreciate all the kindness and compassion that was shown during the last 24 hours. This experience is certainly a positive event to finish out 2020,” she wrote on Facebook after the jacket had been found.