COLONIE – It was somewhere in the sky, over the beaches of Normandy, Frank, in June 1944, during the Allied D-Day invasion when Lieutenant Edsel McKnight was shot down and killed by enemy forces. Believed to have been with Lt. McKnight on that fateful final mission, tucked safely into his flight jacket, was a miniature bible.

The whereabouts of that bible remained a mystery for decades until one day recently when Mark Moroukian and other members of his family were going through their deceased mother’s belongings.

“We stumbled upon this bible and after opening it up and seeing there’s some interesting information here, we started looking into it a little more and my niece did some checking online,” said Moroukian.

“I wasn’t content with just being done with it,” added Ava Coogan, Mark’s niece. “So I kept fidgeting and flipping through the pages, and then I noticed there’s a little slice in the paper, and I was like that’s kind of weird. So I carefully lifted it up, and I saw a note folded up and wedged in there, and I was like, and I ran into the room saying, “Uncle Mark, Uncle Mark, something is in here. There’s a note.”

Scribbled on that note was a message for anyone who came into possession of that Bible to call the phone number that was included.

“So we called,” Mark said. “We just didn’t think the number would work any longer after all this time, but we ended up with a family member that said they were really excited and interested to get the Bible back.”

“I was very surprised that (the number was still good),” Ava stated. “The number didn’t have an area code, so it was written before that was a thing needed.”

The heart shield bible that was a part of American military history will be back in the hands of the McKnight family on Thursday, Jan. 11, when Mark and Ava intend to personally hand-deliver it to them.