By Kevin Spradlin
PeeDeePost.com
After seven years, Lisa Crowley is renewing her search for the owners of a family Bible that appears to have been given to Elizabeth Ann Smith and Edward Howard Bullard on the day they married, May 29, 1977.
Crowley, who lives on the border of Rockingham and Hamlet off Airport Road, said the Bible and various newspaper clippings, including of the couple’s wedding, was left in the trunk of a vehicle her husband bought from a dealer either in Moore or Richmond counties sometime in 2007.
“I look for a while, and nothing,” Crowley said. “I look back, I see a lot of history, their grandchildren. It nearly breaks my heart (for them) to lose this ’cause it goes way back.”
Crowley has heard stories of long-lost items found after several years, decades even. Most recently in Richmond County, a Richmond Raiders class ring belonging to former NFL player James S. Hilton after being left on the counter of a sink in a South Carolina convenience store bathroom. The ring was returned 23 years later to its original owner after social media posts on Facebook and The Pee Dee Post generated dozens of calls until it led to Hamilton.
Crowley’s hopeful this search, too, is successful. After all, she knows what it’s like to lose meaningful personal belonging. Crowley said her home burned in 1998.
“I lost all my family photos,” she said. “To lose something like that (Bible), it would absolutely break my heart.”
The Bible was stored safely in her home since 2007. Crowley said neither she nor her husband, or a co-worker at the time, recalls in what vehicle the Bible was found. Her husband’s used car company processed nearly 500 cars a month at the time, she said, but most cars were purchased from Bill Smith Ford or Phillips Ford, both in Moore County, or Griffin Credit Quick in Hamlet.
The newspaper clipping inserted between the pages of the Bible tells of Smith and Bullard, both Richmond Senior High School graduates and Rockingham residents, and of their double-ring wedding ceremony in Concord. The Bible is full of family history, showing the birth of daughter Elisha Noelle Bullard on Nov. 30, 1979, at Richmond Memorial Hospital and, later, daughter Adria Elizabeth Bullard on Aug. 5, 1986 in Rock Springs, Wyo., and Matthew Edward Bullard, born Dec. 28, 1987 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Much of the information on both parents’ family trees also is completed within the pages of the King James version of the Bible, published by Dett-Mar Associates in Charlotte. The Bible appears to have been given by the Rockingham Merchants, including the Richmond Savings and Loan Association, Rockingham Discount Mobile Homes, Watson-King Funeral Home and the R.W. Goodman Co.
“Congratulations from your home town friends,” the opening pages read in greeting from the businesses.
Crowley can be contacted by email at lisa_jcrowley@yahoo.com.