Family Bible missing 70 years returned to owner

Deacon Tom Jennings, while tidying up the sacristy of Annunciation Church in Saint Joachim Parish, Bellmawr, saw a very old, well-worn Bible on top of a vestment case. He had noticed it before; in fact, he said that it had been shuffled around for quite some time.

One day, though, Deacon Jennings decided to open it.

“I saw on the back pages dates of births, deaths and weddings written, and at the top was written Wyatt Family,” Deacon Jennings said.

So he put on his detective hat and began digging.

“Genealogy is one of my hobbies, so I couldn’t just throw it away,” he said.

With the aid of websites like Ancestry.com, Findagrave.com and Newspapers.com, Deacon Jennings was able to track down a family member living in Runnemede. He contacted Holy Child Parish, which told him there was one person listed in the Bible that was still alive – Doris LaSanta (nee Wyatt), who will be turning 93 in September.

Deacon Jennings called and left a message, saying that he had found the Bible and could put it in the mail.

When LaSanta’s son, Michael, 60, heard the message, he immediately drove with his mother to Annunciation Church. The staff called Deacon Jennings, who also immediately drove to meet them.

“We met up and we talked for about 15-20 minutes, and he handed her the Bible,” Michael LaSanta said.

“This might be yours,” Deacon Jennings said as he handed Doris the Bible.

She started to cry.

“It was something I didn’t expect,” she said. “I just burst out in tears. I was happy about it, and it brought back a lot of memories, happy thoughts. It’s pretty well beat up. It’s been gone 70 years.”

Just exactly how the Bible became lost, she couldn’t quite say.

“I don’t know whether my husband took it to church to read it,” she said. “I don’t know if it was left in the church. I know I had it when I moved into this house in 1960. That’s all I could tell you.”

The Bible would have been left in the old wooden Annunciation Church that was torn down in the 1960s and taken along when everything was moved to the new church. Apparently, nobody wanted to get rid of it, so they just kept moving it around for seven decades.

“My aunt gave it to me in the early 50s,” said Doris LaSanta, who is a founding member of Saint Maria Goretti Parish (now Holy Child).

“It has some inscriptions and Mom’s handwriting,” her son pointed out.

In her handwriting were the names of family members, dates of births and marriages including “Mother and Dad, March 8, 1927,” and “Nicholas and Doris LaSanta, April 14, 1956.”

“She’s looking forward to updating all the marriages and the deaths and everything which is in our big family Bible,” Michael LaSanta said. “It was a real blessing that she got it back.”