Exclusive | Cigarette lighter found at NYs Jones Beach in 1960s finally reunited with family of Vietnam vet who lost it

A long-lost lighter that was dug out of the sand at Jones Beach nearly six decades ago has finally been reunited with the family of the Vietnam veteran who owned it, The Post has learned.The silver igniter etched with a map of Vietnam made the 3,000-mile journey over the weekend to Oregon, where Theresa Shipley and her son Andrew laid eyes on the relic her late husband Paul talked about so often.“He wasn’t the kind of man to cry, but I think he would’ve shed a tear when he heard that he was getting his lighter back,” Theresa, 58, told The Post Monday about Paul, who died in 2003.For decades, the lighter had been something of a mythological artifact in the Shipley household.US Marines vet Paul frequently reminisced about the wartime object, and even enlisted the help of his wife to rifle through every inch of his belongings in their Salem home in hopes of finding it.He never realized that he’d lost it way back in the 1960s his hometown of Long Island, which he left after serving two tours in the Vietnam War.“He said the reason he re-enlisted was because he didn’t get shot the first time,” Theresa said of her hero husband.The couple met in the ’70s in Oregon at Salem Hospital, where Theresa was working as a housekeeper and Paul as a plumber, a trade he learned during his time setting up water purification systems overseas during the war.Paul moved to the West Coast shortly after his service concluded because he was tired of digging his van out of the snow, Theresa recalled.“I remember Paul talking about that lighter and he always wondered what happened to it,” Theresa said.He didn’t realize his lighter didn’t make the trip with him — and tragically died of a heart attack without ever knowing where the prized possession ended up.Unbeknownst to the Marine, an eagle-eyed Army paratrooper from the Bronx had scooped up the detailed lighter while enjoying a day at Jones Beach in the late 1960s.Frank Livoti Jr.

said his father, Frank Livoti Sr., ...