PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Did you or someone you know send a postcard from Paris to South Junior High in 1961?
The front office at Herberg Middle School is looking to solve a more than 60-year-old mystery after a treasure from the past arrived at its doorstep. A recent mail delivery included a handwritten postcard dated June 1, 1961, that appears to be from Sue Smart.
While the transcription is up for interpretation, it appears to read:
Dear Mr. Guidi,
We are now in the Montmartre outside of Paris. I had my profile sketched in charcoal. We have seen quite a few interesting pictures both here and at Le Louvre. The weather has been nice except for Switzerland where it snowed!
Sue Smart
The address line appears as "Mr. R. Guidi, c/o South Jr. High, Pittsfield, Mass, U.S.A." Theodore Herberg Middle School formerly served Grades 7-9 as South Junior High School.
On the front is an image of Place de la Concorde, a public square located between the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre Museum.
Dorothy McGurn, a clerk in the school office, said the Postal Service worker delivered it with an equal amount of confusion, as it just appeared in his delivery box that morning. It was speculated that it could have slid into a crevice for over a half-century and been discovered when a piece of machinery or old stock was moved.
"We'll never know where it came from, unfortunately, why it was lost for so long," she said.
McGurn assumes that it was addressed to a teacher and from either a staff member or a student, explaining that before the social media it was common for people to send a postcard when they went on vacation.
This would be a big deal to the receiver at the time, she said, as they were getting something that was flown in from another country.
"The postcard is a little reminder of how we used to communicate and what was important," she said.
There are no employees left at the school from this time so the name was not familiar. A little research turned up a possible lead: Raymond Guidi, an art teacher at the school until 1963, when he began working at Dalton Junior High and later Wahconah Regional High School.
For now, the postcard is framed in the office but if the sender or relatives of either party came forward, the school would happily turn it over.
"My assumption is she was a teacher maybe at the time or a student and she went on vacation and promised Mr., I'm not sure of his name, a postcard from where she went and she sent it and he never got it," McGurn said.
"So if we could get it back to him, that'd be great. If the family came and wanted this, we would give either family the postcard but for now, we're going to keep it here, we're going to frame it up, and we're going to keep it available for folks to check it out."
Paraprofessional Bryan Jefferson looked at the handwriting and observed that it appeared to be written by a left-handed person.
This small piece of history will be shown to the after-school program, which McGurn works for, accompanied by a lesson on communication methods of the past.
