Calling it serendipity at its finest, Mungo Clark’s granddaughter is looking forward to handing over 90-year-old letters to her mother.
A bundle of letters dating back to the early 1940s were recently discovered in a stolen vehicle in Rimbey.
Most letters were penned between Margaret Clark and her brother Gen. Mungo Clark, who served with the Canadian Army overseas in the 40th Battery, 11th Field Regiment.
Sylvan Lake’s Trish Rasmussen, one of Mungo Clark’s three grandchildren, picked up the letters with her siblings this week in Rimbey. Her mother Bonnie is Clark’s only daughter.
“We had no idea they were missing at all,” said Rasmussen, 39. “We don’t know where they came from.”
She said the letters showed a softer side of Clark because the war had changed him.
“I think it is so nice for my mom to be able to read some of his emotional moments because she did not get to see that at all in her upbringing,” said Rasmussen. “I am just really, really happy for my mom most of all. It will just mean a lot to her to read these letters and see a different side of her dad.”
Bonnie is working at a camp in British Columbia and will be home to Sylvan Lake in two weeks.
Rasmussen said she read some of the letters with her husband last night.
“He has such a dry sense of humour,” said Rasmussen. “Hearing some of his stories back to his sister and it was quite comical.”
She said there was a lot of emotion behind the letters.
“You know these soldiers go away to war and all they have are these letters and the connection to the world,” she said. “And when there is a void there, how lonely could that be.”
Clark was born on Oct. 2, 1916 and died in 1995. He would have been 100 this year. Rasmussen has been in contact with Margaret’s granddaughter in New York. She plans to make copies of the letters for her siblings and Margaret’s family before giving them to her mother.
Rimbey RCMP put out a call last week trying to reunite the letters with relatives of the Margaret and Mungo Clark. The letters were written when Mungo was serving overseas.
crhyno@www.reddeeradvocate.com