IRELAND: Found & Lost

Staring lonesomely at the tossing Atlantic from the rail of a Liberty ship, Medical Corpsman Frank Hayostek felt a small notion growing big inside him. Why not? said the notion.

Frank went below to his bunk and wrote a note. “Dear Finder,” it said. “I am an American soldier . .. 21 years old . . . just a plain American of no wealth, but just enough to get along with. This is my third Christmas from home . . . God bless you.” He added his address—184 Iron Street, Johnstown, Pa.—stuffed the note into a small aspirin bottle, corked and taped it. Then he kissed it gently and tossed it into the sea. The small notion bobbed out of sight and, almost as soon, out of Frank Hayostek’s mind. It was Christmas night, 1945.

Your Loving Friend. Eight months later, a letter came to Frank Hayostek back home in Johnstown, Pa. “I have found your bottle and note,” the blue, slanting script told him. “I will just tell you the whole story. I live on a farm at the southwest coast of Ireland. On Friday, Aug. 23, 1946, I drove the cows to the fields beside the sea and then went for a walk on the strand called ‘The Beal.’ It is an inlet of Dingle Bay.

“Well, my dog was running before me and I saw him stop and sniff something light on the sand, and then he went off in pursuit of sea gulls. I found the object was a brown bottle . . . The cork . . . crumpled in my fingers. How the note kept dry, nobody can understand. It must have been because you mentioned God’s name on it, and He brought it to safe harbor . . . I sat there on the beach and read it.

“I thought at first I was dreaming. This is just a little common Irish village where nothing strange ever occurs, and this is something for the farmers to talk about while they cut the oats and bring the hay into the barn. Well, imagine, the bottle has been on the sea for eight months . . . Who knows where it has been? It may have traveled around the world. How did it escape being broken on the rocks? If you had only seen where I got it! It’s all a mess of rocks. The hand of Providence must surely have guided it.

“Well, I hope to hear from you soon . . . You mention offering no reward to the finder of the bottle. Well, I ask no reward, as it was a very pleasant surprise. Wishing you very good luck, your loving friend,

Breda O’Sullivan”

Seven years and 70 letters passed. Breda, a country milkmaid in the County Kerry village of Lispole, a speck on the map not far from Tralee, wrote of raising a greyhound, of playing a few parts on the stage at Killarney, of hoping some day to teach Frank the hornpipe. Frank, who was now an arc welder, wrote that he had sold his 1941 automobile, cashed in his war bonds and was setting aside $80 a month until he had enough for an airplane trip to County Kerry.

Your Good Pen Pal. Last week, with a round-trip ticket and $350 extra in his best suit, some nylons and a musical powder box in his valise, and reporters and photographers surrounding him, Frank Hayostek boarded a plane to fly to his blue-eyed colleen.

Only an Orangeman, and a sour one at that, could resist such a beginning to an international romance. Frank and Breda met first in Tralee where, as the song says, the pale moon rises above the green mountain. While most of County Kerry (and a stomping herd of out-of-town newsmen) looked on, they spent a day touring the Killarney Lakes, several hours at the thatched cottage on the 15-acre O’Sullivan farm where Breda’s uncle dourly examined the visitor from America and 24-year-old Breda stuffed him with tea and cakes specially made at the baker’s in Dingle.

Kerrymen were overjoyed to note that in no time, Frank and Breda were holding hands and smiling coyly at each other. But Frank and Breda, caught between excitement and embarrassment, kept County Kerry—and a good part of the world—waiting. “It’s in the hands of God,” commented Frank. “She’s very nice.” “After all,” added Breda with a blush, “we only met a few hours ago. Up to then, he was only a man in a bottle.”

Inevitably, they went off to kiss the Blarney Stone together. But then, while hundreds of pencils, typewriters and teletypes poised to write the happy ending, they ended the suspense.

‘There is no romance and there will be no wedding,” said Breda. “. . . We will remain good pen pals.” Said Frank: “That’s right.”

Somehow, it was as if the glass slipper in the Prince’s hand was too small for Cinderella.