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MYSTERY SOLVED: Second World War letters reunited with Gorman family (4 photos/VIDEO)

‘It’s pretty amazing that so many people pulled together to help you and your team try and find who these letters could go to. My family will be so excited about it,' says Scott Gorman

A ding on an Ancestry.ca account has led to a family being reunited with a major piece of their history, and it’s all thanks to the researching skills of BarrieToday readers.

On Nov. 11, BarrieToday published a story about Stroud contractor Dave Smart, who found a box of Second World War letters behind a furnace in a Toronto home he was renovating.

Smart was trying to find family members of Arthur Robert Whitley (the writer) and Amy Florence Gorman (the receiver) to reunite the letters with family members, and turned to Barrie-Innisfil MP John Brassard for assistance.

follow-up story ran by BarrieToday on Nov. 15 containing details of the Gorman and Whitley families unearthed by interested members of the community.

Scott Gorman, a relative of Amy Gorman, reached out to BarrieToday last week and the letters were handed off Monday with the assistance of Brassard.

“I really appreciate everybody’s help in trying to find a home for these letters. It’s an incredible story for one, but I think it’s pretty amazing that so many people pulled together to help you and your team try and find who these letters could go to. My family will be so excited about it,” Gorman told BarrieToday.

Scott Gorman, 46, lives about an hour’s drive outside of Ottawa. He went to school in Guelph and Florida, and worked in Austin, Tex., before moving back to Canada in 2013. He’s a program manager for a video-game publishing company.

In November, Gorman received two private messages through his Ancestry.ca account that piqued his interest.

“A woman named Lisa, and a woman named Maria... they both linked the original BarrieToday story into their message to me, so that was when I first heard about it,” said Gorman. “I definitely recognized the names from my family tree. I wasn’t sure if it was the same person or not. Amy isn’t an uncommon name, and neither is Gorman.”

Gorman reached out to BarrieToday about two weeks ago for further details. After corresponding, Gorman was able to take some of the names and details collected by members of the community for the follow-up story to his aunt, who lives in Kanata, Ont.

He considers her to be the family historian.

“It was really the second story that helped me and my aunt recognize the links better,” said Gorman.

Not only was Gorman’s aunt able to confirm the family link, she was also able to share a photograph of Amy’s father, William Gorman, with Scott Gorman’s great-grandfather, Albert Gorman.

The two were brothers.

She was also able to share some eerie family links from the first story.

“One of the things that stuck out in her mind was in one of the letters where Arthur says, ‘It was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.’ I guess that is something that the Gorman men would say,” Gorman said with a laugh.

“My dad and aunt had visited Uncle Bill. She remembered my Uncle Bill had helped my grandfather in Ajax when he’d had back surgery. Apparently my grandfather was very close to Uncle Bill. She thinks my grandfather stayed with my Uncle Bill in Toronto for a length of time,” he said.

Gorman said he’s been interested in his own family history since about 2017, and joined Ancestry.ca then to try to memorialize some of the family history he does have.

“I started with the Gormans, but I also did it for my mom’s side of the family as well. I took all of our family photos and documents and scanned them in,” he said. “From there, I was easily able to share that out to my nieces, nephews, siblings and cousins. I saw it as something that needed to be taken care of or things wouldn’t be carried on through future generations.”

Gorman’s hope is to read through the letters, digitize them and upload them so he can make connections with other family links.

“If we’re super lucky, maybe we’ll be able to continue the search for Edith, Paulette and Carl, and someone in the family will have information that my aunt and I don’t have,” said Gorman.

So far, Gorman has kept the letters and their story a secret from the rest of his family members, aside from his aunt.

“My dad’s birthday is actually coming up later this month. They don’t even know about the story yet. I’m hoping it will be a surprise for everyone,” said Gorman.


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Jessica Owen

About the Author: Jessica Owen

Jessica Owen is an experienced journalist working for Village Media since 2018, primarily covering Collingwood and education.
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