Love's Labor Lost

"If, by the time this letter reaches you, I am old and gray, I know that our love will be as fresh as it is today . . . If this should never reach you, it will still be written in my heart that I will go to extreme means to prove my love to you." The incurable romantic who wrote this letter aboard a ship between Hawaii and the West Coast on March 14, 1971, chose a means of delivery that was extreme indeed. He signed his love note "Your husband, Bob," addressed it to his wife in Seattle, put it in a bottle and dropped it in the Pacific Ocean.

The bottle washed up a few months ago on a beach in Guam and was found by an American jogger. He replaced the 10-c- stamp on the letter with a new one and posted it the regular way, but it came back marked "No longer at this address." So the jogger sent the love note to the Seattle Times, which managed to track down Bob's beloved, Donna. Reporter Don Duncan read the note to her over the phone.

Wherever you are, Bob, and old and gray though you may now be, you should know that your passionate prose of a decade ago still stirred her emotions. Sort of. Donna laughed heartily, told Duncan, "We're divorced," and then slammed down the phone.

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