Message in a bottle
By ROBIN LAWSON
Tidewater Review Editor

KING WILLIAM – When 7-year-old Wyatt Louke came across an old green bottle with a crinkled piece of paper rolled up inside, he thought for sure he had found a pirate’s treasure map.

“It was laying [near] a creek in the woods and I just went and picked it up,” he said, grinning. “I was so excited!”

Unable to get the metal screw top off, Wyatt’s dad, Jeff, broke the bottle against a tree so they could retrieve the message.

What they found wasn’t from a pirate, Wyatt explained, but the writer did offer a hefty award.

The short letter reads: “Hi mat (mate), if you find this boldol (bottle) you will win $1,000,000.”

It is simply signed “J.V.W.”

“I was like, whoa! How many dollars is this?” Wyatt said.

Accompanying the child’s handwritten letter was a separate note that gave a West Point mailing address and a full name — Jordan Wills.

Jordan, now a senior at West Point High School, doesn’t ever remember writing the letter, but her grandmother does. “She remembers Jordan throwing it off our pier” into the Mattaponi River, Rachel Wills, Jordan’s mom, explained. They live in the Brookeshire area of King and Queen County near West Point.

Jordan was about 7 or 8-years-old, the same age as Wyatt, when she wrote the message and threw it in the river.

“It’s a mystery how it ended up in the woods in New Kent County,” Rachel added.

She and her husband, W.E., speculate the bottle could have landed there during a hurricane.
When Wyatt found the bottle, he was walking along a piece of hunting property with his parents and younger sister near Terrapin Point in New Kent County. The bottle, which looked like an old 7-Up bottle, they said, appeared to have washed up in a creek.

Wyatt and Jordan met for the first time last Tuesday. And while he didn’t get the full reward amount, he was surprised to receive his first $10 bill.

“I’m going to hang this on my wall with the letter,” he said.

Wyatt is also going to write his own message in a bottle and hopes he too will learn one day where it washes up.

Jordan Wills and Wyatt Louke hold the letter she wrote, put in a gree bottle and threw into the Mattaponi River about 10 years ago.
Robin Lawson photo