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Woman finds several letters from World War II soldier in attic, returns them to family

SOMERSET, Pa. — A Somerset County woman who found several letters from a World War II soldier inside the home she recently bought says she knew she had to locate the soldier's family and return the letters.

Kayla Borosky said she found several letters from Lester Berkley, a World War II soldier, dating back to 1942 in the home she just bought.

"I went upstairs to the attic. It was the only room that still has junk mail, bills and tons of stuff that was never thrown out of the house," Borosky said. "I knelt down, and I was cleaning up this disaster, and I found one letter and another letter and put them in a box and kept looking."

Boroski said the letters were addressed to Berkey's family in Hooversville, and she's unsure how they ended up in Somerset.

"I read every letter, and they're remarkable. It's him telling his family that he's OK, what he did, what they were trained in," Borosky said. "I felt like my heart told me I had to give them back."

Borosky knows she could have thrown the letters away, but instead, she found Berkley's nephew, Melvin Berkley, who also happened to be a veteran.

"I said, 'Do you know Lester Berkey?' and he said, 'That's my uncle,'" Borosky said. "I said, 'I have all the letters he wrote to his family from World War II.'"

"I was really surprised to hear from her," Melvin Berkey said. "I had no idea. We never thought about them because I never knew anything about them before."

Borosky eventually hand-delivered a piece of Berkey family history to Melvin Berkey and his wife.

"It's really inspiring, I'll tell you, because there is so much history," Berkey said. "We have the letters now, and I started reading them last evening, remembering some of the things he was talking about."

Lester Berkey died in 1968.