Tampa Bay woman finds WWII-era message-in-a-bottle in debris left by Hurricane Debby

SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. (WFLA) — Hurricane Debby washed up a piece of history in Safety Harbor.

It was filled with sand, a stick, a weighted ball, a bullet casing and, most importantly, a letter. It appears to have been written by a sailor stationed at the U.S. Navy Amphibious Training Base in Norfolk, Virginia during the final months of World War II.

Suzanne Flament-Smith was picking up trash along the shoreline when she noticed a glass bottle.

“Dear Lee, received your letter yesterday. Was glad to hear from you,” the letter, dated March 4, 1945, began.

The letter goes on to sound like a conversation between friends.

“We were just talking about as a family how it’s human history and how it kind of brings history to life. It was really neat to see how it lasted, so far,” she said.

Flament-Smith said that five minutes before she found the message, a man stopped her and asked if she had found any treasure. Then, she uncovered the bottle.

“You could see in the bottle, the letter, you could see the letter and the script, and I was like oh my gosh, it’s a message in a bottle!” Flament-Smith said. “It’s like history come to life.”

She opened it with her family and said the experience felt like something out of a movie. Now, her goal is to get the letter back to where it came from.

“There’s always little treasures in life that you might come across and I think this is a perfect example of that,” she said.

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