Goodwill store finds WWII letters sailor sent from Great Lakes Naval Station near North Chicago

Goodwill searching for relatives of Robert Ballantine, who was stationed in Illinois 80 years ago and served on D-Day.

ByABC7 Chicago Digital Team WLS logo
Sunday, September 11, 2022
Kentucky Goodwill store finds letters from Navy sailor serving on D-Day
A Kentucky Goodwill store is looking for the relatives of a serviceman who was stationed in Illinois 80 years ago.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A Kentucky Goodwill store is looking for the relatives of a serviceman who was stationed in Illinois 80 years ago.

The store found letters he wrote during World War II.

Two letters were found inside a box donated to the Bellevue Goodwill store over Labor Day weekend.

The letters were written by Navy Seaman Robert Ballantine to a woman in Bristol, Pennsylvania. He mailed the first one from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station near North Chicago.

The second was written at sea.

The people at Goodwill discovered Ballantine's ship was part of the D-Day operation in Europe.

They hope to track down his next-of-kin so they can return his letters to them.

Copyright © 2024 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.