Message In A Bottle Returned -- 23 Years Later

PLANTATION, Fla. -- Twenty-three years after tossing a message in a bottle into the Atlantic Ocean at Port Everglades, Fla., its sender received a response from across the ocean, Miami TV station WPLG reported.

"If you look at it, you can tell it's definitely 23 years old," said recipient Judy Kissel as she gingerly handled the age-stained paper Thursday. "It arrived yesterday from a gentleman in Bordeaux, France."

How the message got to France is something Kissel described as amazing. It started in 1987, with a summer camp field trip. Kissel was a counselor with the Soref Jewish Community Center in Plantation at the time.

"We had our kids put notes in bottles, which we released in Port Everlgades," she said.

The messages simply said hello and asked for correspondence. Twenty-three years later, on Wednesday afternoon, correspondence is exactly what Kissel got.

"The letter says, 'In May of 1995, I found this on the beach," Kissel read from the note, which is written in French.

The message took eight years to travel thousands of miles across the Atlantic to the coast of France. Along with the original message and that new letter, the sender also included a map showing where it was found.

"It means a lot that somebody took the time after all of these years to follow through on a campers' project from 1987," said Kissel, who still works at the community center.