You did it WNC! The Swannanoa Wedding Album will soon be back with its family!! 🩷🩷

I was ready to search a database of 40,000 photographs for wedding shots. Juls was prepared to map out addresses in a 5-mile up-river area to match a house number in one of the photos in the album. When Juls called me yesterday, I was cropping close-ups of the bride and groom from scans I did earlier to post in another round of Facebook groups. Then she said, “They found us!”

Doreen LeCompte, owner of the wedding album, was tipped off by her daughters when they saw a post on Facebook.

How could they not? You, WNC, shared it over 1400 times in Facebook groups like Friends of Swannanoa, NC, Hendersonville, NC, I found your stuff ♡ – WNC, Connecting lost/found items to survivors of Hurricane Helene in ETN/WNC, and on your own walls. You suggested ways to care for the album and pictures, offered services, provided optimism, “bumped” the post to get more attention, and you prayed!

YOU, as a community did it!

💜💜 Y’all are awesome! 💜💜

Jennifer Michael saw the need to save these memories and started the chain of events. She found it because she traveled to Swannanoa to provide donations and give back to the community. Check out her experience volunteering in Swannanoa:

When Juls and I talked to Doreen last night, she said she lost everything in the storage unit when a house floated through it and destroyed the building. This is heartbreaking to hear. And that’s why my mission to save family histories before it’s too late – through digitizing, archiving, recreating and sharing – will grow here at Secret Boxes, possibly as a non-profit. We’re researching that possibility.

The Swannanoa Wedding Album story isn’t over yet. Doreen is coming over tomorrow to see it. We’ll see what happens next. Stay tuned!

Thank you for reading. 
I appreciate you.
~ Vicki