A librarian discovered a 1950s wedding photograph tucked into the pages of a used book and tracked down the family of the happy couple in the timeworn picture.
While volunteering at the Sterling Heights Public Library in Sterling Heights, Michigan, Helen Poniatowski made an unexpected discovery as she flipped through the used book on her first day.
According to a report in The Washington Post, Poniatowski found a 72-year-old black-and-white wedding photograph hidden between the pages of the donated book.
“I thought, ‘Oh what a shame. Here’s this nice wedding photograph and we don’t know anything about it,’” Poniatowski, who checks donated books for copyright details and forgotten items, tells The Washington Post. “People leave things in them.”
The photo showed a bride and groom alongside two wedding guests. So struck by the image, Poniatowski couldn’t recall which book it had come from. But on the back of the photo, she found the handwritten names: “Frank & Josephine Ruggirello.”
‘Wedding Photographs are so Meaningful’
Hoping to find the individuals in the photo and return the image to them or their families, Poniatowski passed the picture along to a colleague, who brought it to the Sterling Heights Public Library’s administration office.
“Wedding photographs are so meaningful, and we just thought it was worth a try to reunite it with its rightful owner,” Anneliese White, public relations and programs coordinator at the library, says.
The staff began searching for the Ruggirello family and shared the photo on Facebook in hopes of identifying the couple in the picture.
Eventually, Sarah Ruggirello saw the library’s Facebook post and confirmed it showed her grandparents Frank’s and Josephine’s wedding in Detroit on September 26, 1953. Frank Ruggirello passed away in 2020, and Josephine died in 2023. The couple had been married for 67 years.
Sarah Ruggirello tells local TV station WXYZ-TV that the returned photograph has become a prized keepsake for her family and that they had no idea this image existed.
“My dad and I have never seen this exact photo before. We didn’t know this exact photo existed,” Ruggirello tells WXYZ-TV. “I think now I’m going to frame it and display it somewhere in my house just because this was such a cool story and such a cool thing that happened.”
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