Julie Edwards remembers the day in May 1945 when a telegram informed the family that her Uncle Denny was missing in action.
Dennis Gray Jr., a pilot in the U.S. Navy, was away fighting in the Pacific in World War II. His plane had gone down during the Battle of Okinawa. His body was not recovered.
The 5-year-old girl had adored her Uncle Denny. They had a special connection. She went outside, sat in a tree swing on the family’s Montana ranch and sobbed.
More than 75 years later, a priceless item that once belonged to Gray has found its way back to his family under unique circumstances.
“To have something like this from him is a treasure,” said Luci Willits, Edwards’ daughter. “It is truly irreplaceable.”
A ‘time capsule’ discovered
Willits doesn’t always immediately check her Ancestry.com messages, but she’s glad she did on Feb. 12.
A California woman found Willits through her public family tree while researching the name of Dennis Gray Jr. The woman was reaching out because she had found a wallet with Gray’s name among her grandparents’ things and wanted to return it to his family. The wallet contained several photos and other items.
Willits had a group family call with her mother and siblings to share the news, then replied to let the woman know she had found the right family. A short time later a package arrived in the mail.
“We all couldn’t believe it,” Willits said. “It is a time capsule.”
Willits estimates the wallet is 80 years old and in good condition. When she opened the wallet, Willits found Gray’s ID and a photo of her mother at age 5. There were also images of other family members, multiple airplanes, a mystery woman, receipts of items purchased and a check he had endorsed but not cashed.
“It’s my honor to return this wallet to you,” the California woman wrote in a letter that came with the package. “He gave his life in one of the most important moments of the war. You, his family, have also sacrificed. There’s no way to properly thank you, but I hope his wallet is a comfort.”
The wallet and items inside have given the family new insight into who Gray was and the priorities of his life.
“We have very few things from him,” Willits said. “We have his flight record and a few mementos, but nothing like this, nothing that he held, nothing that showed where his mind was. It was very endearing to me that the first picture he had was my mom. She was the oldest grandchild and had a special relationship with him.”
Reconnecting with Uncle Denny
Edwards’ mother was Gray’s sister, and he visited the family often before military service took him to the Pacific. They had the same color of hair — she was a cute little red head and he had dark, auburn wavy hair. It made for a strong family bond.
“I remember how excited I got when he came to visit because he was just so fun and he paid a lot of attention to me,” Edwards said. “I have such good memories of him because we had such a good time together. He just spoiled me rotten.”
Seeing his wallet brought all those memories back to Edwards, who has spent hours looking at its contents, reviewing his military record and trying to identify the mystery woman.
“It’s hard to put into words,” Edwards said. “It was just sweet.”
“What a wonderful memento because she is the only living person left that knew him,” Willits said.
Edwards recently celebrated her 82nd birthday. To hold the wallet and remember her Uncle Denny again has been a “sweet experience.” She is extremely grateful the California woman who made an effort to find their family.
“She could have just thrown it away or filed it away with her grandfather’s things,” Edwards said. “But the fact that she reached out with it, that’s a tender mercy.”
The California woman did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article.
Willits had considered making her family tree private and is glad she didn’t.
“Without my public profile, she would have never found us and that wallet would have either ended up in the garbage or in an antique shop, never back in the hands of our family,” Willits said. “The power of the genealogical community is strong.”
How the wallet was preserved
The family believes the wallet never left the United States.
According to his military records, Gray spent two months in Deland, Florida, at the same time as the California woman’s grandparents lived there. Her grandfather was also in the service.
“We have no idea how her grandfather got the wallet,” Willits said. “I imagine that Uncle Denny accidentally left the wallet in Florida and his friend saved it with the thought they’d reconnect after the war. But we will likely never know the real circumstance.”
The woman who found and sent the wallet agreed.
“Knowing my granddad, he wouldn’t have kept it if it weren’t meaningful to him or my grandmother,” the California woman wrote. “I do know that they lost beloved friends in the war and Dennis must have been one of them.”
The mystery woman in the wallet
There are two photos of an unidentified woman in the wallet, who the family suspects was Gray’s girlfriend.
Another family member who inherited some of Gray’s memorabilia has a bracelet with the name, “Harriet Ariel Simmons, Hartford School of Nursing, 1943,” but so far they haven’t been able to confirm the identity of the woman in the photos.
“We figure that’s who the girlfriend was, that bracelet belonged to her. We’ve been trying to track her,” Edwards said. “For him to have that bracelet and two pictures, it must have been a fairly serious relationship.”
“We have no idea who this woman is,” Willits said. “Clearly he cared about her. So who is this woman and what was her story after Uncle Denny died?”
‘Truly irreplaceable’
Willits shared one takeaway from this remarkable experience: You never know when something that feels insignificant to you might hold great significance for someone else.
“I think the good news story is that there are people out there who will go the extra mile to make sure that family connections remain,” she said. “She gave us a gift we could have never had on our own. ... When you consider that my mother is the last living person who knew uncle Denny, and now she has his wallet, it is a memento that is truly irreplaceable.”
