“It shows that there are still very good people in the world,” Janet Long said after a stranger discovered her father’s long-lost wallet and a collection of family keepsakes hidden in a Cheyenne home. The discovery returned a piece of family history to four sisters twenty years after the death of their father, George Monroe Long.
The recovery happened when J.R. Larsen, a father of three girls, was searching for a hiding spot for Christmas presents in a closet of his home on Henderson Drive. Tucked away on a little ledge, he found a wallet containing an envelope addressed to George Monroe Long at 3352 Alexander Ave., an old Wyoming Gold bank card in the name of Mrs. Long, folded maps, and a small stack of faded photographs. Larsen used the Cheyenne Community Connections Facebook page to track down the family, leading to a reunion of belongings on a Wednesday evening.
A legacy of courage and “Gorgeous George”
For Cindy, Kathy, Janet, and Sandy Long, the wallet was more than leather and paper; it was a portal to a father they remembered as a multifaceted man. He was a newspaper man, a pilot, a veteran, and a “Jeep tinkerer” who raised four girls alongside his wife, Arlene. The sisters recall a man with jet-black hair slicked back in an Elvis style, wearing Levi’s 501s and smoking Marlboros. His brother had dubbed him “Gorgeous George,” a nickname that stuck throughout his life.
The items recovered also shed light on a side of George that he rarely discussed. While his daughters knew him as the dad who cut their hair and took them on flights to dirt strips near Egbert, the wallet contained an Army registration document and a commendation from the 74th Engineer Combat Battalion. Dated October 23, 1952, the document recognized the officers and men of Company A for their courage during the Korean War, specifically for preparing an assault on “Snipers Ridge.” The mission required moving four tanks up a steep reverse slope of a mountain with 1,700 feet of elevation while under what the commendation described as an “almost constant enemy artillery and mortar barrage,” working within 150 yards of snipers.
This contrast—the soldier of the 1950s versus the father who played badminton and kickball—is a common thread among veterans of that generation. Many returned from overseas and transitioned into quiet civic lives, leaving their military achievements in drawers or, in this case, a lost wallet.
Battling the “torpedo of heart disease”
Among the recovered keepsakes were writings from George regarding the most grueling period of the family’s life. He once described the family as the target of a “torpedo of heart disease.” Arlene Long suffered from severe heart trouble, which culminated in a terrifying open-heart surgery in Denver. George recounted the moment he heard the intercom call “Red 228,” signaling a crisis. He described seeing a specialist pounding on his wife’s chest and felt, in that moment, that she had ceased to exist for him.
Arlene survived that ordeal, but the struggle continued. In July 1969, the couple’s youngest daughter, Sandy, was found to have a hole in her heart “the size of a silver dollar.” She underwent surgery at age three at Children’s Hospital Colorado. The family’s pursuit of “normalcy” was interrupted again a year later when Arlene suffered another cardiac crisis while vacationing in Washington. The trip home to Wyoming forced the oldest daughters, Cindy and Kathy, to step in as “mini-mothers” to their younger sisters.
Arlene eventually underwent a third surgery on her birthday, July 28, to receive an all-stainless steel valve. George wrote that he could only thank God for the extended lives of his wife and daughter, noting that “God’s protection is hereditary.”
The mystery of Henderson Drive
While the emotional impact of the return is clear, the logistics remain a puzzle. The wallet was found in a 1950s-era house on Henderson Drive where Janet Long and her husband, Mike, had lived decades ago. However, the sisters noted that the wallet had never turned up in any of their childhood homes. How it remained hidden on a closet ledge for so long—and why it only surfaced now—is unknown.
George Long passed away in September 2006. As his daughter Cindy reflected, “He was just a wonderful all-around guy.”
