Lifestyle

Marty Lost Her Handbag in High School in 1954. Then Demolition Crews Found It With a Prom Invitation Still Inside: “It Brings Back a Lot of Memories”

By Curtis Jones · November 14, 2026

The year was 1954. Rosemary Clooney was at the top of the charts, and a high school junior in Jeffersonville, Indiana, named Martha Ingham lost her handbag.

She went on with her life. The handbag stayed put for 65 years.

Inside Edition told the story in February 2019, after the bag turned up during the demolition of her old school to make way for a new building. Her ID was still inside, so the school district knew whose it was. Finding her was the hard part.

According to TODAY, construction workers came across the black stitched clutch behind cabinets in a science classroom of the former Jeffersonville High School. On Feb. 7, 2019, Greater Clark County Schools posted on Facebook: “Lost and Found Alert: Martha Ina Ingham’s handbag from 1954 has been found in the Franklin Square demolition. We would love to return it to her or her family!”

It worked. A relative spotted the post and contacted one of her children, TODAY reported, and the bag was soon in the mail to its owner. Martha, who goes by Marty and is now Marty Everett, was by then in her 80s and splitting her year between Florida and Maryland.

“It brings back a lot of memories,” she told Inside Edition. “A lot of people I haven’t heard from in a long time.”

The contents read like a snapshot of a 1950s teenager’s week. Inside Edition showed her lipstick and compact, prom photos, a tissue she had blotted her lipstick on and a 65 year old stick of Juicy Fruit gum. TODAY listed a tube of lipstick, gum wrappers, her Social Security card, the school basketball schedule and a first place ribbon for the mile relay at a 1954 track meet.

The best find was a handwritten letter from a hopeful classmate. “I’ve heard that Paul has asked you to go to the prom with him. If he hasn’t, I would like very much to take you,” it read, according to TODAY. The suitor signed the note “Torchy.”

Marty said no. She went to the junior prom with her boyfriend at the time, Carter Williams, TODAY reported, and she later caught up with him about their high school days.

Going through the bag decades later surprised her. She told Inside Edition it was “really interesting to me, you know,” and full of “things about my life that I’ve forgotten about.”

She also noticed how much courtship has changed. “They wouldn’t do that today,” she told TODAY of the handwritten invitation. “They would text. I just think that’s really sweet when I look back on it.”

School district spokeswoman Erin Bojorquez told NBC affiliate WAVE 3 News, as quoted by TODAY, that she hoped “this little piece of history brings back fond memories of her year at Jeffersonville High School.”

Stories like Marty’s turn up whenever old buildings come down. Schools, churches and offices often hold decades of lost items behind walls, under floors and in the backs of cabinets. If you hear that a building you once knew is being renovated or torn down, it can be worth following the school district or owner’s social media pages, where found items are often posted first. Marty’s bag made it home because someone in her family saw a post and spoke up.

And if you are holding onto old letters, photos or keepsakes of your own, consider writing a few lines about who and what they are. Marty had a school ID to lead the way back. Most of our keepsakes do not.

Marty’s story and quotes are from Inside Edition’s February 2019 report and from TODAY’s reporting the same month; details of the Facebook post, the letter and the bag’s contents are as reported by TODAY. This article was produced with the assistance of AI and fact-checked against the sources cited by LightWave Reports.