It’s a mystery Australian Joe Winkler set out to solve.
After picking up a vintage varsity jacket that stood out to him at his local thrift store, known as an “op shop” down under, he wanted to know where it came from.
“We don’t really have those sort of varsity style letterman jackets or whatever in Australia so much,” Winkler said, who lives in Melbourne, Australia. “The price tag wasn’t too steep. And so I bought it.”
LISTEN: Australia man sets out to find original owner of second-hand jacket
The letterman’s jacket is made of yellow leather and blue mohair, and features the embroidered name “Wally” on the chest, and the crest of a 1970s-era broomball club from Ingersoll, Ont.
“I had no idea what country it was from or if it was even real,” he said. “I’d never heard of broomball.”
It turns out that Ingersoll isn’t too hard to find. “There’s only one Ingersoll in the world, basically. So, it narrowed it down pretty easily. I discovered that must have been from this town in Canada,” he said.
Winkler took his search a step further and posted to a Facebook group for Ingersoll locals, a 16,000 km journey from where he bought the jacket. Once his post was approved, he went to sleep and, with the time difference, woke up to nearly 100 comments.
It didn’t take long for “Wally’s” family and friends to see the post and help solve the mystery that it once belonged to the late Wallace Clayton.
“From everything that people said, he seemed like a fantastic bloke,” Winkler said. “It’s just awesome to see.”
For Brad Clayton, seeing his dad’s jacket pop up on Facebook brought back a flood of memories. “He was a good dad for sure,” he said. His dad died in January 2011.
“I was really shocked to tell you the truth,” he said. He donated some of his dad’s belongings to a Goodwill second-hand shop in Ingersoll after his dad died. The jacket was too small for him or he probably would have kept it, he said.
He remembers his dad playing broomball on Sunday mornings when he was young, and having some beers with other players after the game was over. Once Brad turned 15, he joined in the fun as a referee.
“It was a day for those guys to get out and enjoy themselves,” he said. “I thought I was important because I was refereeing these older guys and that was kind of cool.”
It’s something Allan Juett remembers, too.
The 79-year-old from Ingersoll played broomball with Wallace for years, including in 1977 and 1978, on the same team as Wally. The broomball club had about 30 members.
“We would get new jackets probably every five or six years, and everybody bought their own, so we could show off that we belong to the club,” Juett said. “[We] made lots of friends and enjoyed the friendship as much as the game.”
“[We] made lots of friends and enjoyed the friendship as much as the game.”- Allan Juett, former Ingersoll broomball player
“Wally Clayton was a great guy,” he added. “He’s gone now. Most of the guys from those years [are].”
Knowing the jacket ended up in Australia and that someone took the time to track down its history is amazing, he said. “You wonder how something like that could happen.”
LISTEN: Wallace Clayton’s son “shocked” to see jacket resurface abroad
How it got to Australia is still a mystery, but there are some clues.
“I’ve got a couple of probable ideas here,” said Scott Louch, chief operating officer with Goodwill Industries. Vintage varsity-style jackets are highly collectible, he said.
Scenario one: It was donated to Goodwill and sold in-store to someone visiting from Australia.
Scenario two: More likely, it was purchased in Goodwill by a reseller, listed on eBay, and sold to someone in Australia, he said.
Scenario three: Also a possibility it was sold by Goodwill online through their e-commerce division and sent overseas.
“Those would be the most probable ways it would make it to Australia,” Louch said. “We do ship all over the world every day, so it’s certainly not uncommon.”
For Brad, he thinks the whole thing is “terrific,” knowing someone else can make use of it and wear it, a piece of his family history.
