A family has been reunited with their son who they lost in a car accident 15 years ago.
In 1989, an 11-year-old boy named Billy Dahl was on a school trip with his classmates in Oxford, Mississippi. Their class project was to write a message and place it inside a bottle. They dropped their bottles in the water and waited for the day when it will resurface.
It didn’t resurface until 33 years later when a Louisiana shipping boat found the bottle 200 miles away in the Yazoo River in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Billy Mitchell of Big River Shipbuilders saw the green bottle near a barge.
“I’m always that way,” Billy said. “I always look for stuff that’s unique — driftwood or anything … I told my buddy, I said, ‘there’s a message in this bottle!'”
The bottle was intact and still sealed.
Billy was excited. He’s been in the business for 20 years but he’s never discovered a message in a bottle until now.
Using shish kebab skewers, he fished out the paper inside. Most of it was already ruined but there were still some parts that were readable.
Together with his boss, Brad Babb, they tried to piece together the pieces of paper so they can read the message.
They knew it was written by a child in 1989 and they saw Oxford, Mississippi. And they also saw the name, Tahl, which they later discovered was actually Dahl.
“We’re all kids at heart really. We could all envision ourselves as that 11-year-old boy,” Brad shared. “It really just fueled us to go and say, ‘let’s go find this guy’ cause this is kind of a kindred spirit where, ‘would I want somebody to find me? Yes I would.'”
At first, they called nearby school districts to see if this drew any leads but they got nothing.
It wasn’t until they posted a photo of the message on their Facebook page that they got a lead.
“Today our Salvage crew found a bottle with the following message inside. Time has not been kind to the letter. We believe this was done by Oxford, MS student with the last name of Tahl back in 1989. We would love to let that person know we found it. Please spread the word and help us find this person,” they wrote on Facebook.
The post was shared 127 times before they got a message from Melanie Parker Dahl.
It turns out Melanie is Billy’s mom and she confirmed that he sent out that bottle when he was 11 years old. Her husband, Dr. Eric Dahl, received a message from someone who saw the post and they confirmed that it was Billy’s note.
“It’s astounding it happened,” Eric said. “We get a message 33 years after Brian put it in the river. It’s like something in a fictitious novel or something you’d see on TV,” Eric continued. “To see Brian’s handwriting from when he was 11 or 12 years old — it was miraculous. It was a gift from on high. We’re a praying family and this is a part of God’s providence.”
Eric, Melanie, and their other son, Chris, made the trip to the shipyard to meet Billy and take Billy’s project home with them.
“One thing that jumps out at me is an 11-year-old boy saying ‘please’,” Eric shared. “Knowing that something he wrote is connecting strangers, that really helps.”
Billy surprised them one more time and took them to the spot where he found the bottle.
“He’s with them still,” Billy added. “I think that’s what the note meant when we found it. To let his parents know that he was watching over them as well.”
Watch the video below to see how Billy found the owner of the bottle.
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