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Editor’s note: The following story was written by Nancy Sorrells of Augusta County and published in The News-Virginian on Christmas Day. While the story concerns a gift given to an Augusta County man, the giver is from Rockbridge County, and we’d thought we’d share it with our readers.
This year has been a tough one for the world — the pandemic lingers on, gun violence invades grocery stores, schools, and churches, and political discord tears at the seams of our country. But just when you think we have hit rock bottom, along comes something that makes us all realize that inherently the world is good.
Aside from the original Christmas story that took place more than two thousand years ago in a simple Bethlehem stable, let me present to you what is now my new favorite Christmas story. It is a story about a worn-out jewelry box and its hidden surprise that brought two strangers together for a Christmas present wrapped in the kindness and love of humankind.
Think about this story like a musical score. The crescendo came Tuesday — we will get to that part later — but the music started softly a year ago with a well-worn jewelry box calling quietly to a man named Mike Hamilton.
When Rockbridge County’s Mike Hamilton, 63, first spotted the small box in a Staunton thrift shop, he didn’t think much of it. The leather-covered jewelry box sitting in that local thrift store had certainly seen better days. The cracked and scratched leather on the outside was worn entirely away in places, and the entire top was covered with wide strips of blue tape. The velvet lining inside, ironically a Christmas green color, had seen years of use.
Mike picked up the box, opened it, then set it back down and continued to stroll around the store. The Buena Vista native has a passion for two things. Number one: he has spent his entire life professionally helping troubled youth and coaching youth athletic teams. But there is another side to him. He seeks out bits and pieces of local history as a hobby. His particular interest is his hometown. He has accumulated thousands of artifacts, from advertisements and small pieces of memorabilia to the actual doors of the now-razed Buena Vista theater, items he is always happy to showcase in displays and events.
On this day, however, he seemed drawn back to that well-worn jewelry box. He returned to the box, opened it, and set it down again. He shook it and heard a rattle, although the box appeared empty. Then another customer picked up the box and put it back down. That triggered something in Mike; he knew he had to have the box. He picked it up and carried it to the counter, inquiring about the price. $1.99. Sold.
“I asked myself, ‘Why did I want that box, and why did I care?’ But for some reason, I was drawn to it,” Mike said.
Christmas gifts come in all shapes and sizes, perhaps even in the form of an old jewelry box. And so, this begins the rest of the story. Upon close examination of the velvet-lined box, Mike discovered a small string that, when pulled, lifted the interior velvet floor of
MIKE HAMILTON (left) of Rockbridge County presents the jewelry box and family mementos he found at a thrift store to Walter Brown of Augusta County when Brown visited the Hamilton home the week of Christmas. The jewelry box and its contents belonged to Brown’s sister, who died in 2002. Among the items was a photo of Brown’s parents that he’d never seen before. (Nancy Sorrells photo, published originally in The News-Virginian) the jewelry box to reveal a hidden space under the false bottom.
Soon he discovered the source of the rattle — an old coin. But there was more, a lot more. There was paper money — military script from Italy, Korea, and Japan — and several membership cards for a woman named Ester Williams, who lived in Baltimore. Among those paper items were her Cub Scout Den Mother card, her PTA card, and the Scout cards for her two sons, Acie and Rodney Williams.
Two other treasures were hidden under that velvet bottom — a tiny snapshot of an African American couple dressed in their Sunday finest, maybe from the 1940s. On the back, the couple was identified as Mr. and Mrs. Noah Brown. Finally, there was a tattered birth certificate, so folded and worn it was in several pieces. Mike put it back together and placed it in a protective sleeve. The birth certificate was for an African American baby named Ester Virginia Brown, born in Augusta County to Noah and Mary Ella Brown. The birth certificate is dated Dec. 1, 1923.
Intrigued, Mike began the almost impossible detective work to figure out who owned the box and its treasured contents. Fate soon intervened to slow down that work. In early January [2022], he was involved in a horrific vehicular accident that caused him to lose the use of his legs. Spinal and neck surgeries and extensive hospitalizations and rehabilitation followed.
He slowly regained the ability to walk, but his mind returned to the jewelry box even while concentrating on his physical recovery. He knew it was a family heirloom for somebody, but who? He was looking for a needle in a haystack.
While researching people on the internet, he ran into an article that I had written about Walter and Joan Brown of Arbor Hill, south of Staunton. My article told the story of this wonderful couple, both in their 80s, and their life as public servants. Joan spent her career as a teacher and coach in Augusta County, and Walter spent decades on the Staunton police force, becoming the first African American police officer in the city.
The story also mentioned that Walter lived on the same family farm where he was born, and that land had been farmed by his father, Noah, before he farmed it. That clue was enough to send Mike to the telephone to call me and tell me the story of the jewelry box. When he had finished his fantastic tale, I said that I was confident, beyond a doubt, that the jewelry box was linked to Walter Brown. I knew that Walter’s parents were Noah and Mary Ella, and his sister was Ester Brown Williams.
And that is how I came to be sitting with Mike and Walter in Mike’s house near Fairfield on Tuesday. The Christmas spirit was running at full tilt as Mike had filled several rooms with cheerful Christmas decorations — another of his hobbies. Seated at the dining room table with a portrait of Mr. Claus himself looking down upon them were Mike and Walter, two men who have given their lives to the service of others. Now they were getting ready to play the leading roles in a remarkable Christmas story.
Mike began by handing Walter the empty jewelry box, something the latter had never seen before. He then told the story of his visit to the thrift shop and discovering the false bottom. Then Mike began showing the treasures to Walter, starting with the military script and moving through everything else until just two items remained — the photograph of Noah and Mary Ella (Spears) Brown and the birth certificate of Walter’s sister Ester.
Walter was one of eight siblings and is one of only two who remain alive — 84-year-old Walter and his 102-year-old sister Marie who lives in New York. All the rest, including Ester, who passed in 2002, are gone.
The jewelry box almost certainly had belonged to Ester, and in the box, under the false bottom, she placed tiny treasures that were important to her. Treasures that we were now looking at offered a window into the story of the Brown family’s life.
Walter described his sister Ester as a “gogetter” who moved to Baltimore after graduating from Booker T. Washington High School. There she found work on an aircraft assembly line during World War II. In other words, she was a “Rosie the Riveter.” Ester saved her money, went to nursing school, and eventually worked for the Baltimore City Health Department. She met and married Acie Williams in Baltimore. Acie joined the service, probably the reason for the military money hidden in the bottom of the box, and he was severely injured in Korea during that war. The couple had two sons, Acie Jr., who is now deceased, and Rodney, who now lives in Australia.
Eventually, Ester and Acie divorced. She moved back to Augusta County, where she remained a community and church leader and became one of the first Black RNs at King’s Daughters’ Hospital. In her spare time, Ester wrote and published several poetry books and developed Bible games for youth at church.
Walter’s reaction to seeing the snapshot of his parents was priceless. He was quiet as he peered closely at the tiny photograph. Then he spoke in a husky voice. “I’ve never seen this picture of my mom and dad before. I thought I had seen all the pictures of them, but I have never seen this one, and it is a good one of them,” he said.
Walter remembers his parents as devoted to the family, to education, and to the land. He added that he recalls feeling a sense of privilege from growing up on a farm owned by his father, Noah.
“I can’t ever remember missing a meal. Did we have money? No. But we had the necessities of life,” he added.
Owning land and getting an education was paramount in his family. His father worked hard to ensure his children had the best education possible. When Augusta County dragged its feet about providing better schools for area black children, Noah Brown hooked up his team of horses and helped dig the foundation for the new Augusta County Training School (ACTS) where Walter would go to school and where his wife, Joan, would later teach.
When the students going to ACTS had no bus, Noah Brown bought a Model T truck, cut off the back, and built a cab onto it, and then he or Walter’s mother, Mary Ella, drove the kids to school, exacting a promise from the school board to pay for gas.
Those memories and stories must have come storming back to Walter as he stared at a photograph of his parents from a Sunday some 80 years ago.
“This just gives me cold chills,” he said. “When I see this photograph, I think of the love and respect I had for them. I think about all they went through all those years and what they did for us. I am the person I am because of them, and I just try to live up to their examples the best that I can,” he said with deep emotion.
When asked what he would do with the new-found family treasure, he said that the first thing he would do was email his 102-year-old sister Marie, the family sparkplug. “Oh yeah, she emails,” said Walter with a laugh. “She just gave up driving in April, and that hasn’t slowed her down one bit.”
He added that the jewelry box and its contents would also be the centerpiece of the table at the Christmas dinner.
“This is one of the best Christmas presents I could ever get,” he continued. “You will never know how much this means to my family and me.”
It was not only Walter and the Brown family who received a special Christmas present on Tuesday. I left feeling richer for having witnessed the best of human kindness. And, after a year of physical and emotional struggle following his accident, Mike was also overcome with emotion. “To hear Walter say those words is one of the best Christmas presents I could get,” he said. “I am so happy we met and could turn these precious items and memories over to him.”
In the end, we all felt that a higher power was involved in bringing the jewelry box and its treasures back to the Brown family. Perhaps it was destiny, perhaps luck, or maybe Ester, looking down from above, had a hand in the whole thing. No matter, it now ranks as one of the best Christmas stories ever. Don’t you agree?
