Community Corner
1922 Love Letters Unearthed By Detroit Demolition Crew
A demolition crew member thought he may have found money in the rubble of a home but discovered something with sentimental value instead.
DETROIT, MI — That a woman named Rose who lived on Tappan Avenue in Ann Arbor was deeply in love and that she pined to be with Don Falvey was clear. "That I could be with you I know I would feel a million times better than I do now,” Rose wrote in a graceful hand in one of the decades-old letters that were uncovered during a recent house demolition on Detroit’s west side. “I love you so, darling, and just wait.”
What she was waiting for and how it worked out between the two of them isn’t clear, but the construction worker who found dozens of 1922 letters hopes to find Falvey’s family and let them fill in the blanks. After reading one letter, Byron Conway, who works with the DMC Group, knew he had stumbled on someone’s keepsakes and turned to Detroit’s WJBK-TV for help. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Detroit Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, follow us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)
The TV station did some research on the forgotten 1922 love letters, learning a man named Don Dickinson Falvey attended University of Michigan Law School in 1922 and was still in school in 1925, according to a school yearbook. Was he the same Don Falvey who lived at 2232 Gladstone St. in Detroit?
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Conway told the TV station he was picking through wood, making sure that it was cleaned up, and noticed two metal lock boxes. “I’m not going to lie,” he told the TV station. “I thought it was money.”
The contents of the boxes didn’t reveal cash but heartfelt expressions of love with sentimental value Conway decided were better turned over to Don and Rose’s descendants than buried in a landfill.
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Anyone who has information Don and Rose is asked to contact WJBK at (248) 552-5103, via Facebook. WJBK’S Taryn Asher, who can be reached on Facebook or on Twitter, will make the connections with Conway.
» For more, go to WJBK-TV.
Stock photo by Umbrella Shot via Flickr Commons
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