MOULTRIE, Ga.—A true love story has no ending.

This Moultrie resident’s love story is going on 76 years, even after the passing of her beloved husband in 1998.

Ruby Bowermeister and her late husband Bob Bowermeister exchanged love letters over a quarter of a century, according to their daughter Gloria Taylor.

Bowermeister, originally from Mitchell County, fell in love with her husband and married him at First Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., in 1942 at just 18 years old.

Her husband was active duty military for 25 years and was once stationed at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Ga. He retired in 1960.

During this time apart from his wife and family, he exchanged letters with his wife as often as he could, documenting every detail of their lives while they were apart, when he was deployed or in flight training.

Bowermeister kept all of these letters in an old trunk, but up until recently, the trunk full of love letters had been lost for decades.

Taylor said her mother was adventurous and fearless when it came to her late husband.

“She would do whatever it took to see him,” Taylor said. “He was the center of her life.”

The family moved to Moultrie in 1959 right before Bowermeister retired from the military, and they bought a small farm in the area.

They had a house on their property with a small storage unit where they kept all of their excess items from their house, including the trunk Bowermeister kept her letters in.

The storage unit was broken into soon after the Bowermeisters moved into the house and the case was one of the items taken.

Taylor said that she received a mysterious phone call last year from a young lady named Autumn Skye, claiming she had something that belonged to her mother. They met for lunch at Three Crazy Bakers in downtown Moultrie, and in walked the kind lady with a letter addressed to Bowermeister from her husband.

The rest of the letters appeared on her doorstep some time later, according to Taylor.

Taylor said her mother’s reaction to receiving her treasured letters back could only be described as “extremely emotional and humbling because she never thought she’d recover them.”

She said her mother was left dumbfounded.

“It meant so much that they would be returned when she thought she’d never see her letters again,” Taylor said.

“You hear their voices when you read them, like you’re with them,” Taylor said. “You’re in their mind and in tune with their spirit.”