In 1958, an Atlanta woman’s wallet slipped behind a theater wall; 65 years later, a renovation uncovered it, giving her family photos and keepsakes they thought were gone forever

Floy Culbreth lost her wallet at Atlanta’s Plaza Theatre in 1958, when she was 40 and raising two children. She never got it back, and it remained hidden inside the theater for 65 years until contractors found it in 2023, while they were renovating the building. They were removing bathroom wall tiles when they uncovered a space that had once been a closet in the manager’s office. Inside were old objects covered in dust and debris, including umbrellas, hats, empty bottles, a weathered shoe box, and an old popcorn display, and Culbreth’s maroon wallet was among them.There were family photographs, raffle tickets, receipts, library and membership cards, and credit cards from Atlanta department stores Rich’s and Davison’s, which were all pieces of her life from 1958. A dentist appointment card also carried a date from that year.The wallet was conveniently hiddenThe theater’s owner was Christopher Escobar, and initially had no idea who the wallet belonged to. Culbreth had died in 2005 at age 87, but her name and the documents inside gave the renovation team enough information to start looking for relatives. Escobar’s wife searched online and found Culbreth’s obituary, which eventually led to the website for the Culbreth Cup, a golf tournament established by Culbreth’s grandsons in her memory. That connected the theater owners with Thea Culbreth Chamberlain, Culbreth’s daughter.Chamberlain was only 6 when her mother lost it at the theater, and when she finally saw it in 2023, she found photographs and other items she had never seen before. The wallet held a library card, PTA membership card, identification cards that belonged to Culbreth’s daughter and two raffle tickets for a Chevrolet giveaway. There were also credit cards from department stores that no longer exist under those names.The wallet had apparently been placed in the theater’s lost-and-found and then forgotten as the building changed hands and its interior was altered. The closet eventually became enclosed behind new construction, which left the wallet sealed inside.The woman behind the walletFloy Culbreth’s family described a woman who stayed closely involved with her Atlanta community for decades after the wallet disappeared. Culbreth was active in her church, volunteered with nonprofit groups and later helped establish the Atlanta chapter of United Cerebral Palsy after a neighbor’s child was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, while also helping establish an early Atlanta day-care centre for children with cerebral palsy.After her daughter had grown up, Culbreth began working as a clerk in the accounting department at Georgia Power in the early 1970s, where she remained for about two decades. Family members remembered her as someone who enjoyed crossword puzzles, pottery, gardening, cooking and movies, particularly films starring Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy.Her daughter also recalled that Culbreth loved books and regularly used her library card, and read everything from romance novels and history books to recipe collections. Those details helped turn the recovered wallet from an old object into a small record of a woman whose life continued for nearly five decades after she left it behind at the theater.The family got it backEscobar cleaned the wallet before returning it to Culbreth’s family, and on Nov. 19, 2023, Chamberlain and other relatives met him at the Plaza Theatre to collect it. Atlanta Journal-Constitution photographs from the reunion show Chamberlain holding the wallet and examining photographs from inside. Some of the pictures showed people the family could no longer identify, which added another layer to the collection of items that had remained untouched since the late 1950s. The wallet had spent decades hidden inside a theater that continued operating around it, and by the time it was found, Culbreth was gone, but the photographs, cards and receipts inside gave her daughter a direct connection to a period of her mother’s life that had otherwise survived only through family memories.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.