Hey, Vancouver Island residents… do you know Dave?
If so, could you tell him Doug Bradley and five Americans he met in Europe in 1969 are looking for him?
Bradley, who lives in Ontario, is on a needle-in-a-haystack quest for “Dave from Vancouver Island” to let him know of an upcoming reunion for a group of travellers that watched the moon landing together on the floor of the U.S. embassy just outside Bonn, Germany some 50 years ago.
“I was backpacking in Europe in 1969 with my sister… we bumped into a bunch of people in Koln, one Canadian and five Americans and we proceeded to the Bonn Youth Hostel,” Bradley said. “There we noticed that the moon landing was the next day and we were only a couple of kilometres away form the old U.S. embassy.”
Bradley said he, his sister, Dave and the five Americans travelled together for another four or five days after that.
“Then we sort of split up,” Bradley said. “Dave was the one who owned a car so he drove the Americans through Italy and France and Spain.”
Unfortunately Bradley didn’t record Dave’s last name in the diary he kept during his trip and only knew he came from somewhere on Vancouver Island.
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Bradley is appealing to the public for their help locating his long-ago travel friend.
“He would be about 70 or 71,” he said. “It’s really hard if you don’t have a last name.”
Bradley did have a few last names of the American travellers, and he was able to locate them via the internet.
“I’ve actually found all of the people who travelled in that week with us and beyond except for Dave,” he said. “We’re having a reunion in Monterey, Calif., June 11 to 15 and all of us are going except we’re still trying to reach Dave.”
Anyone who may know the ‘Dave’ that Bradley is looking for can contact him at douglas.bradley@rogers.com, or 613-321-2303 or the Vancouver Island Free Daily at editor@vifreedaily.com.