Zoltan Urge and his partner Alex Deng bought a house in Seattle, Washington and began ripping it apart doing renovations.
While removing ceiling drywall in a basement bedroom last week, a slip of paper that had been hidden away fell down.
Hardware engineer Zoltan, 25, opened the piece of paper to discover it was an old report card, dating back to 1957.
The brown crumpled report card for a James Frees who attended Jane Addams Middle School featured his Grade 8 grades that were not too complimentary.
The quarterly report card is full of Ds and Es, the two lowest grades in the American education system at the time.
Dated 7 June 1957, the piece of paper also details James’ many absent days he took that year alongside two “notices of poor work” he was given throughout the year.
James’ mother appears to have signed three out of four of the signature lines, with the last “fourth quarter” section left blank.
Zoltan amazingly managed to track down James’ family but discovered that he had passed away in October last year, aged 78.
Zoltan posted an image of the report card to Reddit on Thursday, writing: “When ripping out my ceiling drywall I found a report card from 1957 that a kid must have hid up there. Someone failed the 8th grade…”
The post has since gone viral on the social media site, attracting over 63,000 likes and more than 1,500 comments.
@fransustenebaum said: “Looks like some forged signatures from Mrs. Frees on the back lol.”
@queuedUP wrote: “Geez man. Way to out him on the internet. If his parents see this you’re such a snitch.”
@jeneric84 added: “It’s pretty difficult to obtain a D- and he has a couple of them.”
Amazingly, the Reddit community helped Zoltan track down James Frees and discovered that he was 15-years-old when he is believed to have hidden the card.
His obituary online reads: “James ‘Jim’ Willis Frees, longtime area resident, passed away peacefully in the early morning hours of October 10, 2020 at his home in Addy, Washington.
“Never a big fan of school, he decided to join the military while in high school. During his service to the country, Jim worked as an aircraft mechanic, a skill that came quite naturally to him.
“After his honorable discharge, Jim started an apprenticeship in pipefitting and refrigeration.
“While serving in Tennessee, he had an interaction with none other than Elvis Presley when the ‘King’ greeted him as he passed by with a ‘Hello Marine’.
“He lived in Moses Lake for many years where he raised his two children, Jim and Shani.
“In 1993, he met Cynthia Almanza and the two married on December 17, 1995.
“He loved helping people and had a generous heart. He was known to give ‘the shirt off his back’ to someone in need of it.”
Speaking today, Zoltan said: “When I pulled down drywall near the air duct a piece of paper fell down. It was folded in quarters and looked like the folded page of a book.
“My fiance noticed it was a report card. We found that mildly interesting so I posted it to Reddit and it blew up.
“It took less than an hour for the collective power of the internet to track down his obituary – I’ve now reached out to his family on Facebook to see if they’d like it.”
Zoltan has since been messaging James’ daughter Shani Law and his wife Cynthia Frees after tracking them down online.
After seeing the Reddit post, someone claiming to be James’ grandson also got in touch on the post.
He said: “This will probably get buried but this is actually my granddad.
“I never really got to know him too well due to his relationship with my mom not being too great. But this is super weird and awesome to see something of his.”
