92-Year-Old Navy Vet Reunited With Wallet He Lost In 1967

SAN DIEGO, CA — Paul Grisham was on a 13-month assignment as a meteorologist for the U.S. Navy stationed in Antarctica in 1967 when he lost his wallet. More than a half-century later, the wallet is now back in the hands of the 92-year-old Navy veteran living in San Diego's San Carlos neighborhood.

“I was just blown away,” Grisham told The San Diego-Union Tribune. “There was a long series of people involved who tracked me down and ran me to ground.”

That "long series of people" included Stephen Decato, Decato's daughter, Sarah Lindberg and Bruce McKee of the Indiana Spirit of '45 nonprofit foundation that has now helped return three items to families of Navy veterans.

The group connected the lost brown leather wallet that was found behind a locker during the 2014 demolition of a building at McMurdo Station in Antarctica with Grisham through emails, Facebook messages and letters, The Union-Tribune reported.

When Grisham was reunited with the item earlier this month, it still had in it his Navy ID, driver's license, and a beer ration punch card among other items from when it went missing in October 1967.

In between the years when Grisham lost his wallet and now, he was on the Hancock in April 1975 during the fall of Saigon in Vietnam, lived in Monterey for more than two decades after his retirement from the Navy and met his current wife in Paris after the death of his first wife.

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