A Florida couple found a message in a bottle off the shore of a river. WXII 12 reported that they were able to track down the Texas man who wrote the message 39 years prior.
Sheila and Teben Pyles were participating in a neighborhood cleanup in South Jacksonville in February of 2022. That's when they found the old bottle on the shore of the St. Johns River.
The bottle had a note that said "look inside." The couple opened it to find another message that said, "If you are the person that found this bottle, please send a note to Ron Clark."
The note had a Texas address written on it, but the couple said that the bottle looked very old and the address was probably no longer correct. Sheila said, "Based on the handwriting, we thought it was a child, and the bottle was aged, we thought around the ’80s. So when I went on Facebook, because I was like, if it was a child, they probably don’t live at that address anymore. I don’t know that I want to send a letter."
After doing months of research, they found that the note turned out to belong to a Ron Clark who lives in Mebane, NC and used to reside in Texas.
Sheila posted a photo of the bottle and message to a Mebane community group on facebook in December in hopes of finding Clark. The post was successful. The Ron Clark who lives in Mebane turned out to be Ron Clark Sr., whose son, Ron Clark Jr., 49, wrote the message in the bottle 39 years earlier while staying with his grandparents in Florida.
The Pyles are now planning to return the message to the younger Clark, who still lives here in Texas.