As told by Adam, a volunteer from our Portobello shop.
"When a large box of old books was handed into the shop, one of them especially took our interest; this book was an old leather-bound Bible with a name printed on the front - David B. Shanley. I looked further and found many old diary entries from a soldier in WWII inside, detailing where he was and what he had to do, even speaking of going into battle. Seeing this, I couldn’t see this either getting put in the bin or going to a collector. So the search for any possible family members began!
The first issue was the fact that the Bible had a small name tag with the soldier's name and a return address if ever lost… in Baltimore! So, after some searching on the military database we found David B. Shanley’s service number, and from this found some fascinating info on the man. He fought in WWII, Korea, Vietnam and after all this became a police officer in California. He was made a 1st Lt. at 21 years old, was a major fighter in the battle of Guadalcanal and received the Award for Heroism during Saipan. Eventually, we found he had died around 10 years ago in Bend, Oregon and couldn’t find any children to be mentioned - trail gone cold!
Going back to his diary entries he mentions his parents; a Ruth and a Mollie-O. After some digging, we found that Mollie-O was his sister, who died in 2017; after discovering the date of her death, I found an online obituary which mentions her being affiliated with a local church, again in Bend, Oregon. I called up the church and spoke to the Father there, who informed me Mollie-O had a son called Michael, and provided his phone number for me. After phoning and explaining who I was, and what I had, Michael became emotional and burst into tears - he was very close with his uncle ‘Dave’ and looked after him as he became older. I popped the diary in the post, and two weeks later it arrived back where it rightfully should be, with David Shanley’s family."
Only one question still remains, and that is how on earth it ended up in a small charity shop on Portobello High Street in the first place?
