Message in a bottle left by their late son decades ago brings family back together for that reason

A message in a bottle discovered by two salvage divers on the Mississippi River has momentarily revived a beloved son who passed away more than 30 years ago.

Billy Mitchell and Brad Babb, two shipyard workers at Vicksberg, Mississippi, received a letter from 8th grader Brian during an ordinary salvage trip on the Yazoo River.

It was written by a young man from Oxford, Mississippi, with the last name “Tahl” or possibly “Dahl,” and the year was 1989.

‘Really, we’re all just kids at heart. We could all picture ourselves as that 11-year-old youngster, said Babb, safety manager at Vicksburg, Mississippi’s Big River Shipbuilders.

It essentially served as fuel for us to go out and say, ‘Let’s go locate this guy,’ since this person is similar enough to us that we would want someone to find us.

It quickly became the topic of conversation at work, and the team decided to publish it on Facebook where it quickly gained a large following.

After learning of the message, Eric Dahl, his wife Melanie, and son Chris drove 200 miles to the shipyard to read the letter written by young Brian.

Brian, a biker who died at the age of 29, battled cancer but lost his life in an accident at home. He penned the letter when he was 11 years old as a part of a field trip that began with him throwing the bottle into the Talahatchie River in Mississippi.

One letter was discovered in Louisiana, while Brian’s sailed 200 miles to the Yazoo River, where it entered a canal, according to Brian’s instructor, who is now 82 years old.It might have come to rest in the Gulf of Mexico if it had managed to catch a different current.

When the salvage divers first met the family, there were tears and joy. The family told stories about Brian to those who had given them such a close-up look at their dearly departed son.

Mitchell said, ‘He’s still with them.’’That’s what I believe the note meant when we discovered it, to show his parents that he was keeping an eye on them as well.

WATCH the exchange when they first meet to read the bottle.

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