OSKALOOSA, Ia. — If a person’s life could fit inside a box, Glen W. Davis’ spirit resides in the small, beat-up Rexall first aid kit tin sitting on his wife’s bedside table.

A surprise, the tin was discovered lovingly placed inside a secret, specially built nook, revealed when neighbor Carl Haffner took a sledgehammer to an old closet in the Davis’ house, which he purchased when the couple moved out. The worn canister held two pay stubs from Glen’s decades of work at a Pella window factory and his hunting and trapping license, renewed in 1992.