Long-lost wallet more intact than memories

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This article was published 28/12/2021 (1521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE — Elvis Presley and the Four Seasons were topping the music charts when Wayne Wall lost his wallet almost 60 years ago.

At the time, he was a 16-year-old apprentice plumber, and his wallet was always in his pocket when he went to job sites and social clubs where Portage la Prairie teenagers would sip soft drinks and dance to records.

But the wallet disappeared one day in 1962 and Wall, now 75, had no memory of it until the relic turned up on his doorstep.

He was shocked when it was handed to him on Dec. 20 by, fittingly, a plumbing apprentice who found it in a crawl space at a commercial building on Saskatchewan Avenue East in Portage.

“I, obviously, had been working in that crawl space 59 years ago when I lost it,” said Wall, a Portage city councillor. “I don’t remember losing it at all. It’s been a lot of life between then and now.

“I was taken aback because I even forgot to ask him his name. I thanked him profusely.”

Wall was surprised the wallet had been untouched all those years. He had no idea what he would find when he opened it.

“I was excited to see it and find out what was inside of it,” he said Monday. “I’m really grateful that he found it. The wallet itself was kind of brittle, but everything in the wallet was in great condition.”

Wall was reunited with a driver’s licence, plumbing apprenticeship card and other personal documents, four $1 bills printed in 1956 and a receipt from a jewelry store for a ring that cost $18.75 at the time.

“I’m still not sure what ring that was,” said Wall. “It was $18 and some cents. It certainly wasn’t an engagement ring.”

He was delighted to find a black-and-white photo of him and his younger brother, James, who was three years old when they posed in front of a car.

Membership cards for two social clubs were also tucked inside the wallet.

One was for the 350 Club, which was in a back room at a café called Nick’s. Located near Portage Collegiate Institute, it was where teenagers would gather after school and dance as a jukebox blasted their favourite songs.

The other membership certificate was for a youth club at the city’s First Presbyterian Church. Both clubs have been gone for decades.

Wall became a journeyman plumber in the years after he lost his wallet.

Later in life, he became a businessman, manager of Portage’s wastewater treatment division and president of the Western Canada Water and Wastewater Association.

Dillon Vrooman, 28, was the apprentice plumber who found the wallet while doing work inside a building that is being prepared for a new business.

He took a look at the contents to see if he could identify the rightful owner and dropped off the wallet at Wall’s house that night.

Vrooman, who works for Portage-based Shewfelt’s Plumbing & Heating Ltd., said it was by far the most interesting find of his career to date and he was surprised the wallet was still in good condition.

“We were doing a bunch of work in the crawl space and it was just laying there,” said Vrooman. “I was shocked when I saw how old it was. It’s pretty cool to see something that old not be chewed up or wet.

“We’ll find old pop bottles or stuff like that, but this was the coolest thing we’ve found, just to be preserved like that.”

Wall stopped by the company’s office the following day and left a bottle of whisky as a thank you to Vrooman.

“I’m so pleased that Dillon brought it to me,” said Wall. “It’s been the source of a lot of smiles and good memories.”

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching