This photo of the late Harvey B. Angstadt was discovered on the side of an Ocean City street and returned to his widow. (Photos courtesy of Debbie Tweed)
Debbie Tweed left her condo at 10th Street and Ocean Avenue in Ocean City, along with her four small dogs, for their usual evening walk. It was March 13 and there was a chill in the air.
“I walked past it, somewhere between 10th and 11th streets in between the Flanders Hotel and the Impala. It was an old picture,” Tweed recalled in an interview.
She turned around, picked up the photo and gave it a good look. It was of a member of the military who was in the Army Air Corps during World War II, which later became the U.S. Air Force.
“I couldn’t figure out why it was there, but it was windy. I figured it could have blown there. I thought maybe someone went to a special event at the Flanders and dropped it,” Tweed explained.
The name on the photo was Harvey B. Angstadt. Tweed posted the photo on social media, namely OCNJ Chatter, hoping people would offer more information about the Angstadt family and how to contact them. but she was unsuccessful.
“I didn’t have any luck,” said Tweed, an Ocean City realtor and retired physical education teacher for the Middle Township School District.
She called numbers associated with the name Angstadt, but also had no luck.
Weeks went by, and then this Sunday, Tweed was sitting in her office at Monihan Realty.
She made a bold prediction.
“I said I would find out who the photo belongs to. I kept coming up with a Linwood address. It said that he was deceased,” Tweed said of Angstadt. “I said I would find one of his relatives.”
Then, finally it happened.
“I looked up one number in Ocean City and called it. A sweet lady answered. She seemed like an older woman. I said, ‘I’m Debbie Tweed and I live in Ocean City and I found a picture of a Harvey B. Angstadt.’ And she said, ‘Oh, he was my husband. Honey, where did you find it? Did you find it in Linwood?’”
Tweed explained where it was discovered, on the road near the Flanders Hotel.
“She said she had no idea how it got there but she did say that she and her son did go to the Flanders recently,” Tweed explained. “She seemed very happy. I told her I would bring it to her Sunday.”
And that is exactly what she did.
She went to the home of Angstadt’s widow, Pat Angstadt, this past Sunday.
“I didn’t actually meet her. She said she would be taking a nap. That was fine,” Tweed said. “I just wanted to deliver the photo to her because it has been sitting here in my house for a while. I wanted to return it to the rightful owner.”
Someday, Tweed would like to meet Pat Angstadt. But for now, she is just happy that she found the owner of the photograph.
“My parents passed away a long time ago,” she said. “They would have been proud that I took the time to find the owner of the photo and deliver it to them.”
