Margaret Davey Barbee graduated from Duke's School of Nursing in 1935. A Valentine's card addressed to her c/o of Duke Hospital in 1934 was lost in the U.S. mail for 76 years and delivered to Duke on March 11.

Durham, NC - Addressed in cursive to Miss Margaret Davey, the envelope arrived at Duke by U.S. mail affixed with a 1- and 2-cent stamp.

The postmark: Feb. 12, 1934.

"There's no telling where it was for these past 76 years," said Mike Trogdon, director of Duke Postal Operations.

With no return address, and no one in the Duke directory by the name Margaret Davey, Trogdon slit open the envelope and pulled out a card decorated with a giraffe and hearts. "To My Valentine," it read. "In the race for my affection, you win by a long neck -- so be my valentine!!"

It was signed, "Joyce."

Since the envelope was addressed "c/o Duke Hospital, Duke University," maybe, just maybe, Margaret Davey was a student in 1934. On a hunch, Trogdon called Duke's Alumni and Development Records.

Records confirmed that Margaret Davey graduated from Duke's School of Nursing in 1935. She married John Barbee, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. They raised a son, James, and daughter, Patricia. Margaret Davey Barbee worked many of her 35 years as a registered nurse for the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Salem, Va., before retiring in Florida.

She passed away this year, on Jan. 10, at age 96, before the lost card surfaced.

"It's been two months since she died, but things are still coming back to remind you that she's still around," said her daughter-in-law, Ann Barbee, also of Florida.

An old-fashioned nurse, Margaret wore a starched white uniform topped off with white cap until she retired from Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Fla., in 1983. She cheered for the Duke Blue Devils, particularly J.J. Redick, every chance she got. In later years, and until the day she died, Margaret kept a poster of the men's basketball team, signed for her 90^th birthday by Coach K, above her bed in the nursing home.

A fierce ambassador for anything Duke, she wasn't shy about showing her Duke pride.

"Any doctor that she ever went to, she'd always check the walls, and it was always, ‘I went to Duke. I went to school at Duke,' " said Barbee, the daughter-in-law. "She would tell everyone. She was very impressed with Duke. That was the ultimate place you could be from."

When first told about the discovery of the lost Valentine's card, even her daughter-in-law couldn't place the card, or Joyce.

The card was postmarked in 1934 from Salem, Va., where Margaret Davey once lived. She had outlived her husband, brother and four sisters. So who could it be?

"I really don't have any idea," the daughter-in-law said.

Then it dawned on her.

Margaret's oldest sister, Florence, had two daughters in 1934. One was Elizabeth (Betsy), who was nearly 2 years old at the time; the other was approaching six, and her name: Joyce.

"My mother wrote both the envelope and the ‘Joyce' signature inside," said Joyce Galbraith Colony, who lives in Charlottesville, Va., and turns 82 in April. "She was my favorite aunt."

The card's whereabouts for the past 76 years may remain a mystery. When mailed in 1934, letters from home were coveted by nursing students studying 11 months of the year. At the time, zip codes did not exist. But in 1963, when codes were announced for the country, or sometime after that year, someone, somewhere, scrawled on the envelope 27870 -- the code for Roanoke Rapids, N.C. The Duke and Durham zip code is 27708.

And on March 11, 2010, the U.S. Postal Service delivered the card to Duke in a plastic bag that read, "We Care." It included a message of apology from the Postmaster.

"Although every effort is made to prevent damage to the mail, occasionally this will occur because of the great volume handled and rapid processing methods which must be employed to assure the most expeditious distribution possible," the plastic bag read.

Trogdon, Duke's postal director, said it's possible the card accidentally fell behind a mail counter in 1934, only to be discovered years later. "My best guess," he said, "is it then went to Roanoke Rapids, and it was there until somebody found it, put it in the mail several days ago, and it ended up here."

But the mystery didn't end there.

Around the same time Duke received Margaret Davey's lost Valentine's card, a second discovery was made in Raleigh.

Another piece of mail -- a letter from Joyce in Salem, Va., to her aunt Margaret Davey "c/o Duke Hospital" -- was found in the U.S. Postal Service's Processing and Distribution Center in Raleigh.

That envelope's postmark: Jan. 15, 1935, nearly one year after the Valentine's card was mailed.

The young Joyce had written in cursive on lined stationery about Christmas presents, A's on a report card and getting her tonsils removed.

"Write to us soon. Lots of love," Joyce wrote.

That lost letter was returned to a family member in Salem, Va., and then sent to Elizabeth (Betsy) DeCarolis -- Joyce's sister and Margaret Davey's other niece -- on March 12, 2010, with an explanation from the U.S. Postal Service.

"We believe it may have been left in a mailbag and overlooked by our personnel who emptied the contents," the Postal Service wrote on March 9, 2010. "Occasionally, an envelope may stick to the seam inside a bag."

The mail bag was recently pulled from storage.

"This is amazing. The timing is just unbelievable," said Elizabeth (Betsy) DeCarolis, 77, of Durham. "How many more might be out there somewhere?"