This time capsule was heaven sent.
A message in a bottle written in 1992 by students at a Long Island high school was discovered in Shinnecock Bay — and the family of the teacher who assigned the class project reveled in its surfacing.
Photos of its contents were posted on the Mattituck High School Alumni Facebook group, and have garnered close to 4,000 likes and more than 300 comments, many remembering the beloved Earth Science teacher there, Richard E. Brooks, who organized the project.
The Feb. 1 find comes at a bittersweet time for Brooks’ family, his son John told The Post.
The educator died in September from Alzheimer’s and his youngest daughter, Heather, 49, died in her sleep unexpectedly weeks later.
“That’s what makes this situation so surreal,” he said. “Over the years, there have been times where we’d hear about bottles being found, but this is the first time that I can remember in the last 10 years. The timing of it, it’s just so perfect. It gives us something heartwarming.”
“Dear Finder, As part of an Earth Science project for 9th grade, this bottle was thrown into the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island. Please fill in the information below and return the bottle to us … Thank you, Shawn and Ben,” the letter in the bottle, dated Oct. 1992, read.
“Mr. Brooks was an awesome teacher. What a fun project. Can’t believe it was 32 years ago. I really want to meet who found this bottle!!” commented Benny Doroski, one of the students who wrote the letter.
Doroski got his wish virtually, when the finder, Adam Travis, 32, who lives on Shinnecock Reservation, replied that he’d found the bottle on top of a pile of debris while he was cleaning his duck hunting equipment.
“I just happened to look over my shoulder when I was walking along the marsh and from the last big flood storm you could see all the debris that washed up and the bottle was just sitting right on top,” he said.
He broke the bottle in order to retrieve the letter, and saw it was connected to Mattituck High School and posted the images.
“Next thing you know, 30 minutes later, there were 60 comments and 100 likes, throughout the day my phone just keeps going off,” he said.
Travis connected with John through Facebook and plans to return the letter to the family.
John, 56, a disabled Navy veteran who fought in Desert Storm, said his father “was born to be a teacher.”
“He was the teacher that would sing a stupid song or do a little dance, whatever got them involved. That’s why he did the message in a bottle project.”
Richard taught 9th grade Earth Science at Mattituck High School for close to 40 years and also coached soccer, volleyball, track and sailing. The town and school are so small that he taught all of his four children.
The teacher was so dedicated to his student, he “actually was firsthand instrumental in stopping [two] suicides.”
The treasured teacher also ate his lunch in his classroom instead of the faculty room, and created a Lunch Club to give students who “sat at the far corners by themselves” in the cafeteria a place to go.
John has a hypothesis on how far the bottle, which he said was thrown into the water at Westhampton Beach, traveled.
“My gut tells me that this bottle probably went all the way around the Atlantic and then made its way home,” he said. “Which I think is such a cool, small town thing.”
