A Magical Discovery Reaches Across the Waves, the Years, and the Miles

The day was last July 11, and this great, big world was about to get delightfully smaller.

Greg Lewbart, V’88, and his wife Diane Deresienski, V’89, were leading a research expedition in the Galapagos Islands when a member of their party, Andrea Loyola, head veterinarian for the Galapagos National Park, made a discovery more surprising than the rare iguanas they’d come to find.

It was a blue Nalgene bottle with a beat-up dollar bill inside and a note: “Beth and Les Goldsmith in the Galapagos.” It had a New Jersey address and a date: June 22, 2001.  

“We thought, ‘Oh, this is the greatest! This is fun!'” Lewbart said.

Little did they know…

At dinner that night, after some internet sleuthing, they decided to try a phone number they thought might be their bottle guy.

Over on the east coast of the United States, it was 11:30 PM and Les Goldsmith answered. A far away voice said his message-in-a-bottle had been found.

“Oh my God!” Goldsmith gasped, as the Galapagos crew laughed and applauded. He began telling his bottle story, mentioning he’d gone to veterinary school.

“Well, the story gets better,” Lewbart said, chuckling, ‘because we are veterinarians.”

“All of us,” Deresienski chimed in.

“No friggin’ way!” exclaimed Goldsmith.

Lewbart said he is a professor at North Carolina State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, but he didn’t go to school there.

“My wife and I went to the University of Pennsylvania,” he said.

“Oh, you’re a PennWe,” said Goldsmith.

“I’m a PennWe, yeah,” Lewbart replied. “Where did you go?”

Now it was Goldsmith’s turn to chuckle: “I went to Penn as well.”

“Oh my God!” crowed Lewbart.

For the next several minutes, they excitedly quizzed each other on the many Penn Vet connections they shared. And with each, the gap between the Galapagos and the United States grew smaller and smaller,

Since then, the Penn Vet alums have corresponded several times. They have not yet met in person, but they intend to. Lewbart and Deresienski mailed Goldsmith, V’80, back the Nalgene bottle, message and dollar he’d set adrift during a visit to the Galapagos with one of his daughters, Beth, all those years ago.

Strangers no more

They have also shared stories.

Lewbart, originally from Willingboro, N.J., is a professor of zoological medicine. Deresienski, a New Englander, calls herself “semi-retired” but she works part-time for a small animal practice, is a consultant to a veterinary school in Ecuador, and has taught veterinary students about working with wildlife and exotics. Together, they lead frequent Galapagos research trips. 

Goldsmith, who now lives in Virginia, had his own animal hospital before becoming a vice president for a Johnson & Johnson company.

And, as Lewbart puts it, “He’s a repeat offender!”

The Galapagos message-in-a-bottle was not his first.

As a University of Miami undergraduate in the early 1970s Goldsmith threw another bottle into the surf by the Florida Keys. Seven years later, while he was at Penn Vet, he got a letter from Denis Murphy of Valentia Island, County Kerry, Ireland. He found the bottle.

In 1994, the two men finally met. Goldsmith was in Ireland for what was expected to be a contentious business gathering. He invited his Irish pen pal. The local press showed up. Murphy, a true Kerryman, charmed everyone, as did their bottle story.  Goldsmith’s business project was saved.

“It was a miracle!” he said.

Lewbart, Deresienski, and Goldsmith remain charmed and a bit changed by their own message-in-a-bottle adventure.

“It’s one of my favorite life stories,” Lewbart said.

“It’s one of those experiences in life where you think maybe there is some kind of reason for all of this,” said Deresienski.

Goldsmith delights in the effect their serendipitous tale has on people.

“For me what’s moving is that everybody who hears the story is happy,” he said. “They just enjoy.”