MOULTRIE — Molly Ellis never dreamed that when she was reading the Santa Letters in The Moultrie Observer that she would run across one from her late aunt, Ethel Brannen Morris.

“We were looking for our grandchildren’s letters,” she said.

She said the colorful ad that the older Santa Letters were placed in caught her attention and the first thing she saw was “Ethel Morris.”

“I thought, ‘How could this be? How could this be’ I read it and I thought, ‘This had to be.’ I just felt it in my heart,” she said.

She said when she looked at the date, she knew it was her late aunt’s letter.

“It just really touched my heart. It brought back floods of memories from their house on First Street. It was very heartwarming, It made you want to reach out and touch them and tell them you love and miss them,” she said.

“I called her ‘Et.’ She was like a second mom to me,” she added.

She said her aunt and her uncle, Dr. Cecil Brannen, helped raise her and her brother, Buddy. She said, her aunt’s concern for the poor children was passed down to her and her family.

Ellis contacted Ethel’s daughter, Becky Brannen Woodward, who lives in Jacksonville.

“You just cannot believe what I’m going to tell you,” she said she told her over the phone.

She said Woodward was just thrilled to hear about the letter and she could hear her squeal with excitement. She sent her a copy of the newspaper.

Coincidentally, Ellis said, family in Atlanta, who she hasn’t been in contact with in awhile, has reconnected with her again. She said now that they are retired, they have more time to get together and they had visited with her just prior to the letter appearing in the paper.

“I told Becky, ‘I can’t believe this is happening and then here comes this letter.’ I truly think the letter has been a connecting force to bring the family back together. What this little, tiny letter did for our family...,” she said.

She said she and her cousin, Becky, had been doing research on their grandfather, a Jewish immigrant who had escaped from Russia and landed on Ellis Island. He had taken the name “Morris.”

“We have never been able to find much information about him. He was the first marshal here in Moultrie,” she said.

She said she has a picture of him on horseback in his uniform and, just this year, she had prints made of the picture and forwarded them to her family in Atlanta.

“It’s just been one coincidence after another,” she said.

She said it felt like somehow her Aunt Et was reaching out to try and bring the family back together after all these years.

The special significance of the Santa letter to Ellis was made even more so because, in a way, Santa letters had been a connection to home for her and her family. Before they retired, she and her husband, Art, worked for the FBI and had lived away from Moultrie in Denver, Colo., New York City and Nashville, Tenn.

“In all of the towns that we were in, they didn’t put Santa letters in the paper,” she said.

So, every year, their children would write their letters and she would send them to The Moultrie Observer to be printed. Then, her mother would send the newspapers they were printed in back to them and that would complete the circle, she added.

“So, for us, it started when our daughter was born. We’ve been sending Santa letters since 1982,” she said.

After they retired in 2002, the Ellises moved back to Moultrie.

“We kept it going here with the Santa letters with our grandchildren. Boy, what a difference in what they asked for then compared to what they ask for now,” she said.

She said she would love to keep seeing the older letters being printed in the newspaper because she has enjoyed reading them.

“You just don’t know how much this has meant to our family. It’s just the greatest gift,” said Ellis.