Student Who Wrote Message In Bottle Found 32 Years Later Reflects

NORTH FORK, NY — The student who co-authored a message in a bottle that's helped a grieving family to heal after the loss of their beloved father spoke to Patch this week about the story that's touched countless hearts.

Last week, Adam Travis found a message in a bottle on the shores of the Shinnecock Reservation — part of a class project assigned by Mattituck High School teacher Richard E. Brooks in 1992. Sadly, Brooks passed away in September, as did his youngest daughter, just weeks later — but the bottle making its way back home after more than 30 years at sea feels like a "hug from heaven," his grateful family has said.

And now, Patch has located one of the two students, Ben Doroski, who wrote the postcard in pencil and sent it adrift.

Benny Doroski, who lives in Mattituck and owns Custom Lighting of Suffolk, or CLOS, spoke with Patch about the message that's gone viral.

In Brooks' earth science class 32 years ago; the students were asked to send messages in bottles to study ocean currents.

The message read: "Dear Finder, As part of an earth science project for 9th grade, this bottle was thrown into the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island. Please fill in the information below and return the bottle 2 us. Merci, Gracias, Danke, Thank you, Sean and Ben."

Students Shawn McGill and Doroski sent the message adrift on the sea, where it likely traveled the world for three decades before wending its way back to the East End shoreline.

Travis then posted about his incredible find on social media, searching at first for the students and then, on the Mattituck High School Alumni page — where the story took on life and meaning with unprecedented fervor.

Doroski said it wasn't easy to recall the exact details about where the bottle was tossed into the surf. "32 years is a long time," he laughed. "I've been wracking my memory, but I don't remember exactly where we dropped that bottle in the water. But I do remember the project itself — and it's so cool that it's come full circle."

But he had no trouble recalling Brooks. "Mr. Brooks was a class act. Definitely one of the best teachers I ever had."

The media swirl around the story has brought a flurry of old friends back into Doroski's life, although he said he hasn't seen McGill in about two decades.

"I was buddies with Shawn, but I haven't seen or spoken to him in 20 years." In fact, Doroski said, he doesn't spend much time on social media but, when the story about the bottle first broke, he logged onto Facebook and found a sea of messages from friends old and new. "It's been nothing but amazing in that regard. To see all the friends I went to school with — people I haven't spoken to in 20-plus years —reaching out because of this story 32 years later, it's so cool."

And nothing but positive memories have been shared about Brooks, he said. "Mr. Brooks was an amazing person and an amazing teacher," he said.

Doroski said he hadn't realized that Brooks had passed, and that his family had also endured unthinkable loss with the death of their youngest sister.

Brooks' son John told Patch that the message, found so soon after their father's and husband's death, has been a balm to his family's broken hearts.

"This is definitely a positive note for the family," Doroski said.

Doroski added that the message also unites the deeply connected North Fork community, where residents have known one another for generations. "It brings back that close-knit, small-town feeling. That school was so small, everyone knows each other. And not just in that one grade, it was multi-generational."

Speaking of Brooks, Doroski said he was a teacher who truly cared about his students. "I would do something stupid, as was usual for me in class, and he would call me out on that, not to make me feel less-than, but to make me a better person. He was definitely a guiding light."

Seeing his 9th-grade handwriting on the postcard, Doroski said, "was hilarious," especially when the two students said "thank you" in so many languages.

The fact that the bottle likely made its way around the world before "coming home," as John Brooks said, is amazing, Doroski said. "That's the craziest part," he added.

Travis told Patch he found the old bottle, passing by it several times before stopping to take a closer look.

"At first, it just caught my eye, but I finally just picked it up. There was an older piece of paper in the bottle that was intriguing," Travis said.

Although he tried to open the bottle, he was unable to remove the paper at the beach; the top of the bottle was too small, so he took it home. At first, Travis tried to use tweezers to remove the paper inside, but saw that it was beginning to tear. So, as a last resort, he broke the bottle over a cardboard box. There was a blank piece of construction paper rolled up and folded, and at first, Travis thought that any message might be faded away because it was so old.

"But then, the postcard fell out, still intact," he said. "It was written in pencil, and there was no water damage. When I unrolled it, I thought, 'Wow,'" he said. "When I saw the date, October, 1992, I thought, 'This is just as old as me, I was born in 1991.'"

Because Travis posted about his find on social media, Brooks' family was able to connect with the man who'd brought a piece of their father back to them, just at the time they needed it most — because their father and a beloved teacher to so many, Richard Brooks, died recently.

John Brooks, Richard's son, spoke with Patch about the discovery that meant everything.

"This whole thing is incredible," he said. "I'm blown away."His father, Brooks said, "never sought the spotlight. He didn't want recognition. Now, he's finally getting it."

His father, he said, was an inspiration to generations of students. Earth science held great, deep meaning to a man who devoted his life to teaching young people.

"He was truly involved and cared about the environment 50 years before it became a matter of national consciousness," Brooks said. His father, he said, would take bottles and cans to Westhampton for recycling back in the 70s; he remembers taking drives with the car filled with bags of aluminum. The cans would be sold, and the funds used for items for Brooks' classroom, his son said.

"It was intuitive to him, he believed that we needed to save the planet or we were going to be in trouble. That's the kind of person he was," Brooks said.

Although his father was asked many times to transition into an administrative position, he respectfully declined, preferring to stay in the classroom, teaching. "He'd tell jokes, sing funny songs, do anything to get the kids interested," Brooks said. "That's where the idea of the messages in a bottle came from, so that the kids could learn about ocean currents."

The bottles were tossed into the Atlantic Ocean; sometimes, off the Cross Sound Ferry into the Long Island Sound — and if a local resident was going on a voyage, they'd ask to take a bottle and throw it overboard.

The bottles have been found around the world over the years, one in the Azores, another near Ireland, one off the coast of Africa.

But the letter found last week on the beaches of the Shinnecock Reservation was priceless, in so many ways.

"My sister Amy said, 'This feels like a hug from heaven,'" Brooks said. Another friend commented, "What a beautiful angel tap."

The message, Brooks said, likely made its way across the Atlantic, to the United Kingdom and then back up to Long Island with the Gulf Stream. "It found its way home," he said.

Since news of the bottle broke, the media attention has been incredible, Brooks said.

When asked how his father would have reacted to the recognition, Brooks answered immediately and without hesitation: "He would say this was a great thing for Ben and Shawn, his two students, and he would defer the credit and the spotlight. He'd say, 'This is great, this is why I teach these things' — let my students tell you more about it.' That's what's so nice about this. He never sought any recognition and he's finally getting it. And it's so well-deserved, he was just such an inspiration."

The message in the bottle, he said, has meant a sign of hope for his entire family.

"We feel it's a message to my mother and my sisters, and to me, from my father and my sister. It's them, saying, 'We're okay. Everything is going to be okay — and we're watching over you. Here's a little sign.'"

Brooks said he plans to continue the journey. In the spring, when his daughter graduates from college, the family — Richard Brooks' wife, children and grandchildren — will gather on the beach, on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, and toss a new bottle into the surf, a note tucked inside.

"We will do this as a remembrance of my dad," Brooks said. "So that one day, 32 years from now, someone can find the bottle and say, 'What a great story! What a great, full circle."