A man discovered a letter his wife hid from him for 56 years. It held a life-changing secret.
"Tony, please don't be angry or surprised to hear this..."
Writing a letter is truly a lost art form, and many young people will never know the joy of it. You had to choose your words carefully and say everything you wanted to say. Once you sent it off, there was no way to be sure it was delivered. No way to know if it had been opened or read. You couldn't take it back or send it again. You just put it in the mailbox and hoped for the best. It was excruciating and magical all at the same time.
One story of a letter never delivered has captured the hearts of readers everywhere. A heart-warming local news story gone viral for the best reasons.
Tony Trapani and his wife were married for 50 years despite the heartache of being unable to have children. "She wanted children,” Trapani told Fox 17. "She couldn't have any. She tried and tried." Even though they endured the pain of infertility, Tony's love for his wife never wavered and he cherished every moment they spent together.

After his wife passed away when Tony was 81 years old, he undertook the heartbreaking task of sorting out all of her belongings. In particular was a mountain of papers stuffed into filing cabinets. Trapani diligently went through every single one.
That’s when he stumbled upon a carefully concealed letter in a filing cabinet hidden for over half a century.
The letter was addressed to Tony and dated March 1959, but this was the first time he had seen it. His wife must have opened it, read it and hid it from him. The letter came from Shirley Childress, a woman Tony had once been close with before his marriage. She reached out, reminiscing about their past and revealing a secret that would change Tony's world forever.
"Dear Tony, I bet you are surprised to hear from me after so many years. I was just thinking about you tonight like so many other nights. But I thought I would write you and find out how you are," the letter reads. "Tony, please don't be angry or surprised to hear this. I have a little boy. He is five-years- old now - grey eyes and beautiful black hair. What I am trying to say Tony is he is your son."
"Please, Tony if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, please come and see him," Shirley wrote in the letter. "Every day he asks me where is his daddy and believe me Tony I can't even answer him anymore. I would be forever grateful to you if you would just see him. ... I'll close now hoping and praying you will answer. P.S. His name is Samuel Duane."
Now, Tony faced the fact that he had a son that would be around 60 years old and he set out to find him.
For over a year, Trapani’s sister tried to track down the mysterious Samuel Duane Childress, until she finally contacted his wife, Donna.
Tony and Samuel met in January 2015 and he felt like a new dad. After meeting his father, Samuel said his mother told him she sent the letter, but Tony never responded. "Why my wife didn't tell me," said Trapani, "I don't know. She wanted children. She couldn't have any. She tried and tried."
It's easy to understand why it may have been hard for Trapani's late wife, Dolly, to pass along that sort of news. Though we'll never know what exactly must have been in her heart and mind when she hid the letter all those years ago.
"I always asked my mom, I said, 'Well what does he look like?'' Samuel said. "She said, 'Well, go look in the mirror."
The two met and caught up on a lifetime of memories with the understanding that they could never change the past. "Just to know him now is so important to me. It's going to fill that void," Samuel said.
But just to be sure, Tony took a paternity test to ensure they were father and son. Stunning everyone involved, the test came back negative. Tony was not the father.

The news upset Tony and Samuel, but they still had a unique bond. They shared a relationship with Samuel’s mother and both have been on an incredibly wild ride after Tony found the mysterious letter.
“They're keeping that bond,” Donna said. “That paper doesn't mean anything to him. That bond has been made—and we're going to move on from here.”
Tony Trapani passed away in 2017, leaving him just two short years to connect with the man he once believed to be his son. If he'd seen the letter earlier, maybe they would have had more time. But that's all in the past, and by all accounts the men treasured the time they got together, and the relationship that they did have — not the one they wished for.
This article originally appeared earlier this year. It has been updated.



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How a DIY dress helped one woman reclaim the power words had on her body.
'We should all be able to celebrate and love ourselves without fear of criticism from others, whatever shape or size we are.'
News flash: Words have power. This is something Jojo Oldham knows all too well.
Whether you're a soap star hearing lewd comments made by a politician 10 years ago or the average woman getting catcalled on her way home from work, what other people have to say about your body leave a lasting impression.
Over Oldham's 31 years of existence, she's received countless comments about her body — both good and bad.
After years of letting these words affect how she sees herself, however, Oldham was finally ready to release them and embrace herself.
She took all the comments she's heard about her body over the years and painted them on a dress. Posing for pictures, with a smile on her face, she took the power those words had over her and refused to let them dictate her self-worth any longer.
Photo via Jojo Oldham/Lovely Jojo's, used with permission.
"The love I have for my body these days is something I've had to learn. And it requires constant maintenance," Oldham wrote on her website.
Photo via Jojo Oldham/Lovely Jojo's, used with permission.
Like so many of us, Oldham says she's been in a love-hate relationship with her body for as long as she can remember. There are days when she's thrilled with how she looks, and then there are days when she wants to delete every unflattering photo ever taken of her. The comments she would receive fanned the flame of her own insecurities.
"I had 31 years-worth of other people’s comments about my body swirling around my head and popping into it on a daily basis, and I wanted to do something positive with them," Oldham explained over email.
The dress is a badge of honor, symbolic of the fact that, while Oldham may have been called these things, she is not defined by them.
Photo via Jojo Oldham/Lovely Jojo's, used with permission.
"The comments that made the final cut have all stuck with me for different reasons," Oldham wrote. "Some because they’re really weird, some because they’re really lovely, some because they’re funny, and some because they’re particularly nasty and they really crushed me at the time."
Photo via Jojo Oldham/Lovely Jojo's, used with permission.
"Once I learned how to be happy with myself as I am, the negative things that other people said about my body just stopped mattering to me," Oldham explained.
Photo via Jojo Oldham/Lovely Jojo's, used with permission.
Comments can do serious damage to even the strongest, most self-confident people. Oldham hopes her dress will help curtail some of that damage.
"We should all be able to celebrate and love ourselves without fear of criticism from others, whatever shape or size we are," she wrote on her website.
She hopes the work will inspire women to remember they are not the sum of the comments made about their bodies; they are so much more.