“My sister, Lisa, remembers the vacation really well,” Tallos said. “She’s even more excited than I am. I really had forgotten all about the bottle, the vacation, so it’s interesting to hear that it’s turned up and survived.”
Tallos was a shy, quiet child, said Lisa Seabrook, Tallos’ sister. He was respectful and smart, but the two had an “unusual” childhood. His father, Wallace, was a pilot for Pan American World Airways and his mother, Wilhelmina, was a stewardess. The family traveled a lot, and the two were often pulled out of school to go on extended family vacations around the world.
That changed when their parents fell ill, Seabrook said. Tallos’ father died of pancreatic cancer and cancer of the lymph nodes in June 1973, six months before the message was written. Their mother died of lung cancer in 1975. Tallos was about 13 then.
Before she died, Seabrook said they went one last vacation - the maiden voyage of the Vistafjord, a 25,000-ton passenger cruise ship, and the largest ship at the time. It left from New York and traveled the Southern Caribbean.
One night after dinner, Seabrook said, the Tallos family gathered at the stern of the ship and helped compose the message in a bottle. Using stationery from their cabin, a pen and a Tab bottle from dinner, Tallos wrote his name and address, with a request for the finder to write back. Together, they sealed the bottle and threw it off the back of the Vistafjord.
It is the last happy memory they had as a family, Seabrook said.
“I don’t think he ever recovered,” Seabrook said. “He was always shy, but never nervous like he is now. It’s been very hard on him - he works and keeps to himself at home with few friends and no dates.
“It rocks your confidence to the core to lose both of your parents so young. We never had anyone to ask questions to - what’s right or wrong.”
“It rocks your confidence to the core to lose both of your parents so young. We never had anyone to ask questions to - what’s right or wrong.”
Heartbreaking.
My heart aches for children who have to cope with such circumstances.