It sounds like the plot of a Hallmark movie. A young couple inherits a house in the country and, while moving in, finds a stack of old letters written between a young man and woman during the war.
But, that’s exactly what happened with Sophia Wheeler and Samuel Ryan-Brunet after they moved into his late grandparents' farmhouse in Fournier, located about an hour north of Cornwall.
“His grandparents kept everything. They grew up in the Great Depression and back then you reused everything and you kept everything,” she explained.
It was while cleaning out a closet on Nov. 24, 2023 that she came across a box full of envelopes. Upon opening the box, she found it contained handwritten letters to and from Korea, including letters written between Nelda Windsor — her boyfriend’s grandmother’s maiden name — and Cpl. Wycliffe Leslie Presley, a soldier in the Korean War, but who lived in the Barrie area.
“I saw that the year was 1952 … I put two and two together and upon further reading, I saw (one of the letter writers) was in fact a soldier," Wheeler said.
More envelopes contained pictures of a man in uniform, family photos of a wife and young daughter.
"With some digging, I found out her name was Marilyn,” added Wheeler.
Some envelopes also contained photo negatives, which, after holding them up to the light, she saw were of the man in uniform standing next to a woman whom she assumed was his mother.
Although she initially hoped the box contained love letters, she learned that Windsor and the soldier were actually related — likely second cousins.
“I was hoping it might have been romantic, but it wasn’t that exciting,” she said with a laugh.
As she perused the box further, Wheeler found a letter at the back of the stack with two stamps, which read “verified deceased” and “from the Dead Letter offices."
“It was my boyfriend's grandmother who had sent it out and it was returned to her,” Wheeler said.
She then found newspaper clippings that showed the soldier was killed in the Korean War in 1952.
Presley, who was a member of the Royal Canadian Regiment, died June 26, 1952. He was 26 years old. Born Jan. 1, 1926 in Bourget, Ont., located east of Ottawa, he enlisted in the army on Dec. 15, 1949 in Kingston. His citations include a Korea Medal and a United Nations Service Medal Korea.
Presley is buried in the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Tanggok, South Korea, a suburb of Busan. There are more than 2,200 servicemen buried there. Of these, 1,538 were Commonwealth soldiers, including 376 Canadians, according to the Canadian Virtual War Memorial.
In 1950, he had married the former Florence Robus at what was then called Camp Borden, about 20 minutes west of Barrie. Their daughter was just eight months old when he died.
With Nelda gone, Wheeler decided she would try to return the letters to the family of the soldier. She went online to track down the little girl in the photographs.
“We had no use for them. They were given back to … his grandmother. I had to find this little Marilyn girl. (In) the pictures she was very young and a lot of these pictures were originals, written on the back to Nelda. I thought if she’s still around, she’d like to have these more than I would,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler decided to use the power of the internet to try to track down the soldier’s daughter.
“I joined a bunch of Barrie Facebook pages. About five days into it, I had a woman … reach out to me telling me Marilyn is her mother-in-law," she said.
Wheeler admitted she didn’t have high hopes that she’d actually be able to find the soldier’s daughter, but she was beyond ecstatic to be able to return them to his daughter after so many years being hidden away in the back of a closet.
“I was so excited. Now she’s getting these letters back from a father she never really got to know. Just to see his handwriting, and the way he spoke, I am sure was going to be really special to her.”
Wheeler mailed the letters back to the daughter just before Christmas.
“It just feels really special. The relationship I have with my parents is unparalleled. I am very close to them, so it breaks my heart she couldn’t have that same relationship with her (father)," she said.
"In reading these notes, her father was a very brave man, a hero in fact. (This is) a way she can get to know her father on a personal level in that sense and it makes me happy," Wheeler added. "It ignites a little flame inside me that I can’t quite describe because it gives her a chance to get to know the father she lost.”
The family of Cpl. Presley, while while they expressed gratitude for the return of the letters, declined requests to be interviewed.
