Nine-year-old Kevin Reeder and his family were vacationing at his grandparents’ lakeside cottage on the Finger Lakes’ Elm Beach in Ovid, New York, one-hundred miles east of Buffalo. As often happened, he had grown bored, but this time his mother, Merle Cushman, had a plan. Always thinking of ways to keep her loving but edgy son upbeat, Mom had an idea that captivated young Kevin.

After hearing Jim Croce’s song “Time in a Bottle” on the radio, Kevin and his mom thought it would be fun to write a letter, put it into a bottle, toss it into the lake, and see if they received a response. Young Kevin, with a little guidance from Mom, wrote, “Hello. Today is July 16, 1978. If you find this, please drop me a line.” Kevin then wrote his name and address.

Kevin and his mom then went to the shore, where young Kevin, with all his might, threw the old green glass bottle into Cayuga Lake and watched it slowly drift across the water. As the bottle grew smaller, Kevin’s hopes that someone would respond to his special delivery grew bigger.

After their week-long stay at the lake, Merle and Kevin returned home. An eager Kevin was disappointed that a bottle letter was not in the mailbox. Days and weeks then passed with still no letter. After several months, Kevin forgot about his message in a bottle.

A response did ultimately come, but not until over seventeen years after the bottle was tossed into the water.

Kevin Reeder

After graduating from high school, Kevin lived in Florida and Texas before returning to his hometown of Geneva, twenty miles north of Ovid, in February 1996.  Soon after settling back into his home town, the now twenty-seven-year-old opened a letter that made him feel like a kid again.

Kevin Comes Home

Postmarked from San Diego, 2,600 miles from Ovid, the letter had been mailed to the return address on the letter. Kevin’s mom no longer resided at that locale, but a mailman who knew Kevin forwarded the letter to him.

The letter read, “Hello Kevin, I found your message in a bottle (like that song) at the Beach in San Diego, Calif. I thought it would be funny to write back. Pretty cool! Bye now.” The note concluded by asking “P.S. Where the heck is Ovid?”

The letter was signed “Rosa and Bruce;” the respondees did not list their last names and the letter contained no return address or any other identifying information.

Letter Received . . .

Over Seventeen Years Later

The song Rosa and Bruce most likely referenced in their letter is “Message in a Bottle” by the English rock band The Police. The song was released in September 1979, a little over a year after Kevin tossed his bottle into the water.

 

Rosa and Bruce had also included the letter Kevin had placed in the bottle over seventeen years earlier. The paper was brittle; the ink writing was faded but still legible.

Kevin’s Letter Is Returned

After the odyssey of the Ovid bottle made headlines, Dr. Philip Richardson, an expert in global water currents, charted the bottle’s possible route of travel in its nearly eighteen-year journey. He believes it unlikely, but not impossible, that the bottle could have stayed afloat while traversing the world’s waters before landing on the opposite side of America.

Dr. Philip Richardson

Senior Scientists, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

An unlikely, but not impossible, cross-country journey was offered by Dr. Richardson:

1)The bottle first traveled out of Lake Cayuga through the Erie Canal. It then flowed through the St. Lawrence Seaway into the Atlantic Ocean near Nova Scotia, Canada. Dr. Richardson says this would have been the most difficult leg of the journey because it is easy for a bottle to drift ashore. If the bottle made it that far and into the Atlantic Ocean, however, it would have been easy for it to stay adrift for many years.

2) After drifting in the Atlantic Ocean for several years, the bottle floated south along the eastern seaboard before veering towards Europe, and then drifting south along Africa’s west coast.

3) A current then pushed the bottle westward towards South America.

4) After crossing additional northward currents at the equator, the bottle was then pushed back toward Africa, carried back east, past the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, and into the Indian Ocean.

The Bottle’s Possible Route . . .

5) The bottle then drifted east into the southeastern Pacific Ocean.

6) After the bottle again passed the equator, it moved westward and drifted north toward the Philippines and then further north to Japan.

7) For the home stretch, the bottle meandered back east, travelling down America’s Pacific coast before finally arriving in San Diego.

. . . Continued

The bottle’s trek became big backburner news when Kevin placed several advertisements in the San Diego newspapers hoping Rosa and Bruce would respond.  To his disappointment, they did not, and they have never been identified.

Kevin Cannot Find Rosa And Bruce

Oceanographers say if bottles with notes tossed into the water are found, it is usually within a couple of years, at most. The bottles in the water for prolonged periods generally sink after taking on heavy layers of marine growth.

Kevin Reeder’s bottle may have been collected as garbage and put on an ocean barge or been picked up by someone on Cayuga Lake who later sold his or her boat to someone on the west coast, having forgotten about the bottle. Or, the bottle may have simply been picked up and transported across country by either automobile or airplane.

It is not completely out of the realm of possibility, however, that the bottle with the note stayed afloat for over seventeen years.

Was Kevin’s Bottle An Exception To The Rule?

Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” had inspired Kevin to send the bottle adrift.

“As wave is driven by wave
And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,
So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows,
Always, for ever and new. What was before
Is left behind; what never was is now;
And every passing moment is renewed.”

Ovid, Metamorphoses, first published in 8 AD.

Ovid, Ancient  Roman Poet

SOURCES:

• Democrat and Chronicle Rochester, New York
• The Free Lance-Star
• Unsolved Mysteries