Student bottle notes from 2004 make their way back to Garfield

In 2004, Connie Brown, school counselor at Garfield, tossed a bottle filled with student notes into the Selway River in Idaho. Seven years passed.

This May, the school received all the notes back in an envelope in the mail.

Brown said she was surprised when Garfield principal Zane Wells handed the letter to her.

“I didn’t think about it again until the principal handed me the letter and said, ‘This is going to make your year,’” said Brown.

Justin Stewart of Hamilton, Mont., pulled the bottle out of the Clearwater River in Orofino on a fishing trip in May. Stewart took the bottle home to show his two children.

His mother-in-law mailed the original notes back to Garfield. In her letter, she asked Brown to try returning some of the letters to the students.

“I had put in a little slip that said, ‘This is Garfield school. If you find it, please let us know’. But this was seven years ago,” said Brown.

The notes were written on small blocks of paper and contained messages of every sort.

One note, by 10-year-old Jonathan Kuehner, read, “Hello, it’s 2004. When I grow up I want to play college basketball. If I get good, I’ll go pro, so look for me if you get this. I’m ten, almost eleven. I have fun at school.”

Now 17 years old, Kuehner says he laughed when he saw the note he no longer remembers writing when he was 10.

“I laughed because you know when you’re little you think you can do anything. When you get older, you get a little more realistic goals,” he said.

Kuehner, who will start his senior year at Garfield/Palouse High School next year, said he is nowhere close to becoming a professional athlete.

“I got a more realistic goal of becoming a middle school history teacher,” he said.

Tyler Wride wrote “Hi my name is Tyler. Do you know anything fun to do instead of video games?”

He will be a senior at Colfax next year.

Brown told the Gazette she had given her class of fourth and fifth graders the assignment in 2004 to write up anything they wanted on a note. She let the class know she was going camping on the Selway River and planned to toss the bottle in at a camping spot.

“I just put them in the bottle, and I just threw it in the river.”

Brown said she threw the bottle in the river about 20 miles upstream from its confluence with the Lochsa River. The bottle was found near Orofino.

Many of the students in the class are juniors and seniors at Palouse High School this year. Brown said they were delighted to see the notes.

“I think the reward for them is that something they did as fourth and fifth graders came back to them,” she said.