SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (WHDH) - A home improvement project led to the discovery of old love letters in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
Workers who ventured into the crawl space attic at Mary Jo LaRocco’s house found a pocketbook containing various items, including letters dating back to the 1940s from Army-Air Force Pilot Lt. John Jack Bowen. They were addressed to his future in-laws, Walter and Lillian Allen.
“‘I asked your charming daughter Nancy,’ which we know now is his fiancée, ‘to find out the process by which one goes in order to start a joint bank account in one of our local banks,'” LaRocco read a letter dated Oct. 12, 1944.
She wanted to find Nancy’s family and ended up connecting with her niece, Gina Hodgkin, through social media.
“Reading his letters, how he said, ‘I can’t wait to come home and marry you,’ and that was always in the back of my head,” Hodgkin said. “She never married. She never got over it.”
Bowen, a football star at Brown University, was shot down in the Pacific in 1945.
Nancy wore her engagement ring every day until she died.
Hodgkin now holds onto the ring and says she’s grateful to be reunited with the letters he sent.
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