On a whim, Virginia “Ginny” Koesters began searching for a long lost friend whom she had met in her early twenties.

The now 84-year-old widow had hoped to find closure in her search. She never expected that her journey to locate the gentleman — whose name had escaped her after all these years — would uncover so much support from strangers looking to help reconnect her to her past.

“I never did, and I didn’t expect making the front page of a newspaper,” Koesters said.

Koesters, who now lives in Gainesville, Georgia, contacted the Kokomo, Indiana, Tribune in June asking for help locating a man she met during the summer of 1952. She was enrolled in the nurses training program at a hospital in Salina, Kansas. He was serving in the United States Army.

The seemingly shy and sweet young man, as Koesters remembers, was Bobby Max Smith of Scircleville, Indiana.

The two met briefly on the campus of Asbury Hospital one summer weeks before Smith was sent to serve in the Korean War. Though their introduction was brief, Smith left a lasting impression on Koesters, so she agreed to write to him while he was away. He would send pictures and letters to her for roughly four months, until the correspondence suddenly stopped — leading Koesters to assume the worst, but hope for the best.

It wasn’t until May that Koesters decided to actively try to locate Smith. With only photos from the past, and the faint memory of words exchanged through letters (many of which were thrown away shortly after Koesters married later in life), she attempted to exhaust every avenue until she found out exactly what happened to the kind gentleman she met long ago.

After the story of Koesters’ search published in the Kokomo Tribune on Aug. 23, phone calls and emails from people who knew Bobby Max Smith poured in to the newspaper.

One person in particular was a close relative of Smith.

“Uncle Bob was the adventurer,” said Janice Crouch, the youngest daughter of Smith’s eldest sister, Edith Cleo Bradshaw Perlee.

“He was kind of, you know, the cool uncle,” Crouch said in a telephone interview.

Perlee is Smith’s only living sibling. Bobby Max Smith passed away on Feb. 26, 2005 after battling Alzheimer’s disease.

When Crouch viewed the Kokomo Tribune article, she knew the second she saw the front page photo that it was her uncle Bob. Perlee, who is 95 years old, instantly knew the same.

“As soon as she looked at the picture she said, ‘Bobby Max,’” Crouch said.

With the help of her daughter, Perlee was able to provide some information on Smith’s life following the war.

Smith, who as an adult changed his name to Robert Max Smith, grew up on a farm in Clinton County, Indiana.

He was drafted into the war after high school and served as an Army Corps Engineer. While away in Korea he received an injury to his shoulder, cutting short his military career. He then returned to Scircleville to farm corn and soybeans, of which he was very well known.

Bobby Max Smith married three times and had no children of his own. His last wife, Carrol, currently lives in Muncie, Indiana.

Closure finally came to the former nurse after weeks of searching for the man from her past. That event culminated in a phone conversation with Carrol Smith.

“I’m just glad that he did live a life after he came back from Korea…because a lot of them didn’t get to come back,” Koesters said following her conversation.

The two discussed Bobby Max’s life after the war. He was well-known and well-liked in the Scircleville area where he grew up.

Carrol Smith offered to send Koesters some old photos of Bobby Max. And one detail in particular stood out during their conversation: Bobby Max would tell his wife that he had to visit a buddy in Salina, Kansas, which may have been onset by his Alzheimer’s, Koesters said. Carrol Smith never found out who he was referring to until now. Koesters said she found that detail interesting, to say the least.

Although Koesters’ journey did not result in a reunion with an old friend as she had initially hoped, she is beyond satisfied with the results of her quest, she said, and is absolutely amazed at how the mystery was uncovered.

Ball writes for the Kokomo, Indiana Tribune.