‘This was a doozy’: Kintyre woman receives letter in the mail 72 years after it was written

KINTYRE, N.D. (KFYR) - A Kintyre woman thought she’d seen it all in her mailbox. Then a letter from 1953 arrived.

The story behind this piece of mail is unlike any you’ve ever heard before.

Anna Moch doesn’t get a lot of surprises in her mailbox.

“Bills!” she laughed.

So, imagine the Kintyre woman’s shock when she discovered this letter in her stack of mail.

“This was a doozy,” Moch said. “I had to really look at it and study it. I couldn’t believe the date on it.”

It was dated June 10, 1953. It appeared in Moch’s mailbox three days before Christmas 2025.

“It went out via airmail,” she said.

The letter was addressed to “A, V, A, R, P and Ann Gross.”

There’s no address, just Kintyre, North Dakota.

“What are the chances after 73 years?” Moch wondered.

The seal was broken, and Moch couldn’t resist reading the letter.

The writer, Ben, details his daily life in the Army.

“It reads like they were going into battle,” said Moch.

Moch has lived in the Kintyre area her entire life. She knew exactly who the Gross family was.

“They come from a very large family,” said Moch.

The Gross family farm is just down the road from Moch’s. Valentine Gross—the V on that envelope—now lives in Bismarck. He’d seen this letter before. It was one of dozens his older brother Benedict wrote while in the Army.

“He wrote a lot of letters,” recalled Valentine.

Valentine kept them all.

“I grew up in the 30s, and we threw nothing away. And we saved everything,” he said.

Turns out the letter Moch received was among those he saved.

Valentine mailed all those letters back to his brother Ben, who now lives in Georgia.

“I stuck them all in an envelope, taped it, mailed it,” he said.

Weeks later, Ben received the envelope, but the contents were missing.

“The envelope made it, but there was nothing in it,” Valentine explained.

Now, the letters are slowly being returned. One ended up with Moch. Another brother received a few more.

“There’s about 15 missing,” said Valentine.

Valentine hopes that one day all those letters might also find their way back.

Valentine said he always wanted to join the Army, like his older brother Ben and another brother, Andrew. His dad wouldn’t let him join while the others were gone. So when Ben got home, Valentine enlisted and spent two years in the Army.