On her 95th birthday, Pat DeReamer received a greeting card that was already 81 years old.
It all started in 1944, when the Kentucky resident first received the card for her 14th birthday, after her family moved to Indianapolis during World War II.
The “new girl” didn’t have many friends. But one of them, Mary Wheaton, would prove to be the lifelong kind.
“I didn’t know very many people, so, Mary kind of picked me up out of the gutter and, you know, was nice to me,” Pat told a reporter for Kentucky’s WLKY News. “We became really good friends.”
The memorable birthday card featured a cartoon dog on the front with a red bow and the greeting “Here’s Wishing You a Birthday That Really is Colossal.” On the inside, there’s a massive dinosaur skeleton with the message, “‘Cause It’ll Be a Long, Long Time Before You’re an Old Fossil!”
After enjoying the card, Pat saved it. Then she signed it, and sent it back to Mary a month later for her birthday in May.
A tradition was born.
The playful gesture sparked a back-and-forth birthday card custom that has lasted for 81 years and counting.
It survived World War II and went on to earn a Guinness World Record (for the longest greeting card exchange) after 60 years. It has also manufactured a multitude of smiles twice a year for more than three quarters of a century.
“We never said, ‘We’re going to do this’. At least, I don’t remember ever saying that. It just happened,” Pat told WLKY. (Watch the video below…)
“Every year it would give us some reason to call each other and talk.”
The decades passed, the card kept making its rounds, and the world kept changing.
Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Computers became commonplace. Email was invented—and most people quit sending cards altogether.
But not the two girls from Indiana. Even as the decades passed and adult life sent them to separate states, the childhood friends kept the tradition alive.
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Pat knew it would show up in her mailbox this year when she turned 95.
And she’ll sign it, date it, and send it back to Mary in May, just as she’s always done—a tradition of simple joy that brightened her day so many years ago, and will continue to mark a pair of birthdays for another blessed year.
(Watch the local news coverage below…)
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