Family Reunited With Old Photos Found Beside A Park Trash Can

One man’s trash can be another man’s chance to reunite a family with their long-lost memories.

When Dimitri Romanenko was taking a walk through Elwood Park in Syracuse, New York, he had no idea what he was about to find. He and his girlfriend quickly happened upon a briefcase that was sitting beside a trash can. Curious, they opened it up only to find a hoard of old family photos inside.

The pictures were accompanied by other personal documents, and all of them dated back to the 1930s through the 1960s.

Romanenko and his girlfriend decided to see if they could find who they belonged to, so he posted a picture of the photos to the Strathmore Neighborhood Facebook group with a plea to help him find their owner.

That is when a local news channel, WSYR, picked up the story and shared the photos in one of their segments. The news report happened to catch the attention of Dorothy Cooper, who recognized the pictures as those that belonged to Geraldine Neary and Robert “Bob” Hunt – her late aunt and uncle.

As Cooper shared to WSYR-TV, “It just brings back a lot of memories and I’m sure once everybody else looks at these pictures, they’ll bring back memories for them too.”

Cooper added, “I think it was a shame that someone would just abandon pictures like this because you cannot replace these. These are irreplaceable and I just think it’s a tragedy that they would just discard somebody else’s property like this. Who did it? I have no idea.”

It is still a mystery as to how they ended up beside the park’s trashcan, but fortunately, they’re back where they belong now.