Like many American soldiers who served in Europe during World War II, Bill Moore used written correspondence to keep in touch with his loved ones back home.
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Moore couldn’t have expected a woman to find one of his letters (almost 70 years later) in a record sleeve at a thrift store not far from where he lives in Aurora, Colorado.
“My darling, lovable, alluring, Bernadean,” the letter dated 1945 begins, according to ABC 7 News Denver. “I ran out of space, but I could have written a lot more adjectives describing you. You are so lovely, darling, that I often wonder how it is possible that you are mine. I’m really the luckiest guy in the world, you know. And you are the reason, Bernadean. Even your name sounds lovely to me.”
Moore was in tears when the letter he wrote so many decades ago found its way back to him. Bernadean Gibson wasn’t just some young woman he met while on furlough. She would become his wife for the next 63 years, and mother to their three children.
“I was really surprised,” he told ABC 7 News Denver. “I had no way of knowing it would show up in the way it did, and it would actually reach me.”
Unfortunately, Bernadean passed away in 2010. Moore, 90, lives in an assisted care home for veterans in Aurora.
“I loved her, and she loved me,” said Moore. “That’s all I can tell you. It’s a heartache not being with her all the time.”