Woman's Lost Bible Returned After 40 Years

A little sleuthing and a little luck has resulted in a Tennessee woman getting back a Bible she lost in 1972. But as the Tennessean explains, it wasn't just any Bible to Deborah Savely. Her dad had given it to her as a girl a decade previously, and he died the year before she lost it. Savely carried it with her as a freshman to Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin and says she read from it every day—until the day it apparently slipped out of her backpack and went missing. “Daddy died in October of 1971," she tells jrn.com. "I started at Vol State as a student in September of 1972. So, this was all I had of Daddy."

The keepsake remained lost until a retired staffer at the college was cleaning out her basement last month and found it in a box, one she had filled with debris while cleaning up the campus after a powerful tornado in 2006. How it ended up in there is a mystery, but Betty Gibson noticed the Bible's inscription and enlisted the help of other staffers at the school. After a long search, they located Savely in Lebanon, Tenn., and she returned to the school with her 87-year-old mother last week to retrieve the book. “My Daddy’s infused in that Bible,” says Savely. “Whenever I lay my hand on the page, I can feel that big old hand of his come over mine.” (More Bible stories.)