BANGOR, Maine — Steve Robbins learned some things about his great-uncle Skip on Monday after he laid hands on a wallet hidden under the floorboards of a downtown building for nearly 60 years.
“Skip,” whose full name was Leo Wilfred MacDonald, drove a Plymouth. He stood just 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighed 150 pounds — according to his driver’s license, at least. He was born in Orrington in 1904 to an Irish mother and a papermaker from Prince Edward Island.
Roy Hubbard, who is working to renovate and reopen the former Dakin’s Sporting Goods building on Broad Street in Bangor, handed the wallet over to Robbins, 68, after Robbins contacted the BDN after reading a story about the renovations that mentioned the wallet owned by his great-uncle.
The latest date on the documents inside the wallet was MacDonald’s 1956 driver’s license, which would lead one to believe it was lost or left behind around that time. Hubbard’s crew found it between the first-floor floorboards and the basement ceiling as they started demolition work last month. MacDonald worked at Dakin’s for his entire career, selling sports equipment, according to Robbins.
The wallet also contained a Social Security Card, vehicle registration, other assorted documentation and a Saint Christopher medallion and a pendant inscribed with the image of another saint and the words “I am a Catholic, in case of an accident, please notify a priest.”
There weren’t any photographs or cash inside.
Before the wallet exchange, Hubbard walked Robbins through the building, bringing back memories for Robbins, who used to spend a lot of time in the store where his great-uncle worked.
Robbins got excited when he saw the freight elevator, remembering how he had ridden it to the basement once as a child. That elevator motor was installed in 1903, the year before his great-uncle Skip was born.