Ham Radio from the Past

Postcard from yesteryear. Undelivered mail from 1956 comes back to DeLand .

By CHRISTINE GIRARDIN, Staff Writer

DELAND -- It's been a long, mysterious journey for one little postcard.

In 1956, George Hitz dropped a postcard into his Stetson Avenue mailbox, hoping a fellow HAM radio operator in Riverside, Calif., would soon get it. No one knows whether the postcard completed its cross-country journey, but it was returned to its starting place this week bearing a 1956 DeLand postmark and a "return to sender" stamp.


Hitz, 64, doesn't even remember mailing the 3-by-5 inch card emblazoned with his call sign. The cards are an integral part of HAM radio tradition, sent almost automatically to confirm radio contacts made around the world.

The postcard's reappearance, however, is something Mack McCormick, 59, won't soon forget. He now lives at the Stetson Avenue home where the card was sent in 1956. On Monday, he pulled it from his mailbox.

QSL from the Past