Hurricane Safety and Preparedness

Lost and Found: Message in a Bottle

For too many families, last year’s Superstorm Sandy brought destruction and grief. For one New York mother, the storm brought renewal and hope -- in the form of a small, green ginger ale bottle. Inside that bottle was a message from Mimi Fery’s daughter who had died two years before the storm hit.

The bottle was found washed up on the shore of Patchogue, Long Island in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. It had remained buried amidst the debris for weeks until a FEMA worker spotted it -- and the message inside.

On the handwritten note, there was a phone number, which the FEMA worker promptly called. It was Mimi Fery.

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The bottle had been thrown into the bay about 10 years earlier when Mimi Fery’s daughter, Sidonie, was just 10 years old. Big bold letters were sprawled across the paper, reading “Be Excellent to Yourself, Dude.” Although not conventionally sentimental, the quote (which was taken from Sidonie’s favorite movie at the time, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”) meant everything to her grieving mother.

Like the heroes of that movie, Sidonie herself was a traveler. She left her home in Manhattan to go to school in Switzerland, where she died in a tragic accident two years before her bottle washed ashore.

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Brian Waldron, a FEMA worker present when the bottle was found, said, “I just felt like Sidonie was looking down from heaven and wanted us to find the bottle that day.”

That sentiment is even truer for Sidonie’s mother, who said, “My daughter... always somehow appears where I need her. A storm doesn’t destroy everything; it doesn’t destroy hope. It doesn’t destroy memories.”