Postmaster William Rowe is searching for the relatives of long-gone recipients after an unopened World War II-era letter turned up in the mail recently.

The letter was originally addressed to a “Mr. and Mrs. Sensabaugh” at a Washington Avenue home in Muskegon that’s now empty, and bore an initial postmark from a 1945 Army Post Office. The return address listed the letter’s sender as Sgt. Myron C. Cook based in New York.

There was a more recent postmark on the letter — from Minneapolis 2013 – printed over the old.

Rowe and Mauseth said the letter was saved from the ordinary “dead mail” pile by a mail carrier who realized that the letter was mailed from an Army base during World War II. The mail carrier – a veteran of the Persian Gulf War – realized that the letter had an interesting story.

Hoping to find clues into the letter’s past, the post office reached out to Richard Mullally, who for years has been documenting the history of Muskegon County’s World War II Veterans.

Mail mystery: Muskegon post office looking for family to open World War II-era letter