Floy Culbreth holding her daughter, Thea. (Family photo)
Thea Culbreth Chamberlain was speechless as she flipped through her late mother’s maroon wallet earlier this year.
Floy Culbreth had died in 2005 at the age of 87. But Chamberlain was seeing the wallet’s contents for the first time. Her mother lost it in 1958 when Chamberlain was just 6 years old. Suddenly, she was holding a pocket-size time capsule that showed what her mother carried with her 65 years ago: raffle tickets, a library card and old family photos.
A contractor had discovered the wallet hidden behind the walls of an Atlanta theater he was renovating in October. With the help of the long-lost documents and internet sleuthing, the theater’s owner located Chamberlain and her family and arranged to meet them in November and return the wallet.
“I don’t even know how to say how flabbergasted I was,” Chamberlain, 71, told The Washington Post. “And it took a while for it to sink in.”
Chamberlain never knew that her mother had lost the wallet at Atlanta’s Plaza Theatre. But learning about it decades later didn’t quite shock her, she said.
Her mom was always out and about in Atlanta, where she lived for decades with her husband and their two children, Chamberlain said. She was known for being “loving, giving, fun,” Chamberlain said. She “just had a way of welcoming people wherever she went” and always making them laugh.
“I mean, Mother was like watching ‘I Love Lucy,’” she said.
Culbreth loved being around people - bringing “levity to any situation; it was her gift,” Chamberlain said. She was a teacher, an active member of her church and a volunteer for several nonprofits. She had set an example for her family, Chamberlain said, to treat everyone with kindness and give back.
After Culbreth died in 2005, her family wanted to continue that legacy. In 2011, Chamberlain’s sons, Wes and Bryan Jones, founded the Culbreth Cup golf tournament in honor of their grandmother and her husband, Roy. Proceeds from the annual event benefit the United Cerebral Palsy of Georgia because supporting people with disabilities was important to Culbreth. She was a founding member of the organization’s Atlanta chapter.
And it was the Culbreth Cup’s website that was a key to reuniting Culbreth’s family with the long-lost wallet.
In October, contractors were removing bathroom wall tiles during the second phase of the Plaza Theatre’s renovations when they discovered an abandoned closet space, said Christopher Escobar, the theater’s owner.
Floy Culbreth, who died in 2005 at the age of 87, lost her wallet at the Plaza Theatre in Atlanta in 1958. It was recently returned to her family. (Courtesy of the Plaza Theatre)
Beneath brick and rubble, Escobar said, contractors found several items covered in dirt and dust, including umbrellas, hats, empty bottles, a weathered shoe box and an old popcorn display.
“They were careful as they were going through things, almost like archaeologists or something,” Escobar said.
The space had once been a closet in the manager’s office, he said. That’s where they found Culbreth’s wallet, which Escobar said the theater’s staff had probably stashed in the lost-and-found.
But over the years, as the theater switched owners and its spaces were renovated, the closet - along with the wallet - had been enclosed by new walls, he said.
When the wallet was found on Oct. 11, Escobar flipped through it while wearing gloves. He pored over the contents - black-and-white photos, receipts, raffle tickets for a Chevrolet giveaway, and credit cards to department stores Rich’s and Davison’s. There was also a dentist appointment card dated 1958 for Thea Culbreth.
“We opened it up and started realizing how chock-full of history it was,” Escobar said.
At the time, he wasn’t sure he’d have any luck returning it after 65 years. But it was a piece of an Atlanta family’s history, and he knew that he wanted to at least try.
That same day, he took the wallet home to show his wife, Nicole, who searched Culbreth’s name online. She found her obituary, then the Culbreth Cup website, which led her to the Facebook page of Chamberlain’s son Wes Jones.
Escobar messaged Jones, who responded shortly after to arrange a meetup.
Culbreth’s family was in the middle of organizing this year’s Culbreth Cup, which took place in late October, so they planned to meet the following month.
Chamberlain, Jones and other family members crowded together at the Plaza Theatre on Nov. 19 as Escobar handed over the wallet, which he had cleaned beforehand.
“Oh, my goodness,” Chamberlain said as she held the wallet in her hands. “This is hitting me more than I realized it would.”
In that moment, she told The Post, memories of her mother came “flooding back.”
“She was in there,” Chamberlain said. “I know it sounds kind of hokey, but she really was.”
She said the family plans to get the wallet’s contents framed - a preservation of memories they hope won’t be lost again.
