Park Forest Woman’s Note Washes Up in France
Filed under: Discovery,News & Resources
Alan Tomaska estimates that in the 17 years he and Ann Hernandez visited Thacher Island off the coast of Rockport, Mass., he hurled about 50 bottles filled with handwritten notes into the Atlantic Ocean.
(From Southtown Star / by Stephanie Gehring) — On each note, Hernandez, of Park Forest, had sketched the island, where the couple volunteered as lighthouse keepers each year, and written her Park Forest address, hoping someone in a faraway place would contact her.
Tomaska threw bottles out on Hernandez’s October birthday every year and later during other visits to the island.
The messages mostly went unanswered.
“In 1999, one surfaced in Marshfield (Mass.), but she didn’t care,” Tomaska said. “I was more excited than she was. She said, ‘I want it to go to South America or Mexico – at least leave the state.’ “
This summer, one of Hernandez’s bottles was retrieved from the Atlantic off the coast of France. The couple who found the note written in 2003 quickly wrote Hernandez at her home in Park Forest.
But they were too late. Hernandez, 61, had died in November.
“My first reaction was I started crying,” Tomaska said. “I thought of all the years for it to come back to her, she’s not with us. She would have had a smile from ear to ear. She would have loved it.”
Hernandez, who worked as the director of CEDA in Harvey for many years, was a vibrant woman who cared greatly for others, Tomaska said.
Paul St. Germain, president of the Thacher Island Association, which maintains the tiny island off Cape Ann, was contacted via e-mail last month by the couple who found the bottle Aug. 2 at St. Gilles Croix de Vie.
He broke the news to Michele and Daniele Onesime that Hernandez had died.
“Michele Onesime was very sad,” St. Germain said. The couple framed the note.
St. Germain agreed it was somewhat bittersweet that someone in an exotic place had found Hernandez’s note.
“That’s the sad part about it,” St. Germain said. “She never got to see this happen. But it made Alan feel good that it did happen.”
A native of Massachusetts, Hernandez moved to Illinois with her parents when she was in high school. But her family returned every year to Longbeach. She could see the lighthouse from her family’s beach house and always was intrigued by it. She jumped at the chance to volunteer as a keeper.
Tomaska, a home remodeler, said he thinks there are more bottles out there with Hernandez’s messages in them.
“I’m waiting for somebody else to find one,” he said.
Tomaska returned to the island last week with Hernandez’s son David Hernandez, 40, of Chicago. They plan to scatter Hernandez’s ashes on the island on her Oct. 10 birthday.
And Tomaska said he may continue the tradition and throw a message in a bottle out to sea.
“I’ll write, In memory of Ann, or something like that,” he said. “I’m thinking about it.”
HOW DID IT HAPPEN?
Ocean currents expert Amy Bower, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the bottle likely became caught in the Gulf Stream.
“A branch of it goes all the way across the Atlantic,” Bower said.
Bower said it was more unlikely someone found the bottle.
“There are hundreds of thousands of miles of coastline,” Bower said. “Even if she did 50, the chances of anyone finding one are low.”
