Woman’s Lost Copy Of The Bible Found After Four Decades

Four decades after losing her special copy of The Bible, Deborah Savely says it’s been found and returned. Savely said the Bible was extremely important to her because her father gave it to her when she was seven-years-old in 1961. That Bible had been lost for 40 years, according to the Tennessean.

Savely says her father died decades ago, but thanks to strangers, the Bible that her father gave her as a child has been returned. Savely says it makes her feel closer to her father.

“My daddy’s infused in that Bible,” Savely said. “Whenever I lay my hand on the page, I can feel that big old hand of his come over mine.”

Savely recalled her father’s sudden death from a heart attack the year she started college at Volunteer State Community College, according to The Huffington Post.

Savely said that she carried the Bible her father gave her in her book-bag, but in 1974. She tried to find the lost copy of The Bible that her father had written, “Presented to Deborah Savely by Mother and Daddy,” inside many times, but she never located it. She recalled that she felt like a part of herself was gone without that Bible.

In 2006, a tornado went through Volunteer State’s campus leaving a wake of debris. Betty Gibson collected some of the debris and put it in a box. Years later, while cleaning, she came across the Bible with Deborah’s name in it, and set out to find the owner of that Bible. She sent an email out to enlist the help of other Volunteer State employees.

One of those people working to find Savely, Amber Regan, spent hours on the web trying to track her down, a search that ended in success.

“I saw the email and it pulled on my heartstrings,” Regan said. “I found that there was a student who graduated here in 1974 with that name. I just started Googling and putting names together. I was determined.”

Regan found Savely and called her at work to tell her that her long-lost Bible was found.

“I was glad I was sitting down,” Savely told WKRN. “All the wind went out of me. I was in tears. I said, ‘My black Bible? I haven’t seen that in 40 years.'”

Early this month, Savely and her mother retrieved the treasured Bible at the campus where Deborah had lost it decades before.

“I feel complete,” Savely told WKRN. “I’ve got my daddy back.”

[Photo via WKRN]