A treasure trove of secret love letters gives homeowner a rare glimpse at the past
When Anna Prillaman bought a 67-year-old house in 2017, she had no idea it came with a novel-worthy love story.
Tucked away in a cozy neighborhood in Henrico, Virginia, Prillaman and her dog, Alfie, lived in their home for years without any notion that it was full of sweet secrets. Recently while Prillaman was rearranging her bedroom, she noticed something peculiar: a latch to a trap door in her closet. When she opened it, she discovered it led to a crawl space full of the former homeowners' possessions.
“I started fumbling through it and throwing away old bills and old Christmas decorations,” Prillaman said. “I finally got to the back of it and I saw these two boxes of letters and I was like, I don't think I should throw these away.”
The boxes contained what Prillaman believed to be hundreds of hand-written letters from the 1950s that were yellowing and worn. They were all addressed to the same woman, Betty Sue. She noticed that many of the letters written to Betty Sue were from one specific man, Vance. Though intrigued, Prillaman resisted reading their correspondence.
“I didn't know what the contents were, how intimate it was, how intense it was, no clue who they were from and what the intention of it was. I just didn't think it was my place,” Prillaman said.
Instead, she decided to play the role of detective and find the letters’ owners. She posted the information on the envelopes on Facebook asking for help in finding out who the letters belonged to. Her post garnered attention across the internet, and many people got to work trying to solve the mystery.
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Eventually, Prillaman’s search led her to two young men, Dalton and Bodhie Long. Turns out Betty Sue and Vance’s love story led from letter writing to marriage to eventually building a family. Dalton and Bodhie are their grandsons.
“I was very shocked that [the letters were] still in existence, and it was found in the house that we grew up in,” Dalton Long said. "I spent almost 18 years in this house and had no idea those letters were out there.”
It turned out that Prillaman’s house was formerly the Long family home for three generations. The boys spent their childhood in that house. Betty Sue and Vance lived five houses down from the brothers when they were little, and the boys were able to see their grandparents often. Their memories of the two lovebirds were that of an elderly couple, and they are fascinated to learn about a different side of the pair.
“I think it's really exciting for me because they were around my age when they were writing those letters,” Bodhie Long said. “So to think of my grandparents and kind of understand what they were thinking of and what made them happy and what their day consisted of around the same age that I was is like a peak in the past that I hadn't been able to see before."
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According to the brothers, Betty Sue and Vance were both in their early 20s attending college when they were composing the letters. They wrote to one another from afar, bonding over the fact that Vance was on the baseball team, and Betty Sue was one heck of a basketball player. Vance was a kind soul who put much effort into showing love to the people around him. Betty Sue was a southern woman at heart who loved Betty Boop and made sure to mind her manners.
With the Long family’s permission, Prillaman finally read the letters before sending them off. Many of them entailed a blossoming romance between the couple. Prillaman was taken aback by how beautiful Vance’s cursive was and how genuine his love for Betty Sue was. Prillaman noticed how different correspondences were back then compared to the quick text messages and emojis most of us are used to sending nowadays.
“They were adorable. He would always start it off with ‘Hi honey,’” Prillaman said. “And then at the end of every letter, he always had two or three paragraphs of just pouring his heart out to this woman saying how much he missed her."
Prillaman and the Long brothers were ecstatic that Betty Sue and Vance’s cinematic love story was garnering a lot of attention from the hopeless romantics of the world, but they were not surprised. Prillaman believes that in days saturated with difficult news, people need a feel-good story to remind them of how lovely humankind can be.
“It was put there just as a reminder to me that this is what matters. Your family's history matters, you know? Your human connection, your love for each other whether it's romantically or with friends; like all that stuff matters,” Prillaman said.
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The Long brothers just feel privileged to learn more about their grandparents who are no longer with them.
“I just hope it reminds people to take the time and space to connect with the people they still have around and have deeper conversations,” Dalton Long said. “Appreciate the simple things. Appreciate the people that are around you.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Secret door leads homeowner to hidden love letters from the past
