Over 30 years later, ring returned
Published: March 5, 2007
Pam Benack-Smith got lucky at Log Bay last summer, but she didn’t even know it until a few days ago.
She got an e-mail from a co-worker at Glens Falls City Court, Andrea Hess, asking if Benack-Smith had lost a ring.
It turned out that her Hudson Falls High School class ring, which she had lost shortly after graduation, had been found in the shallow waters of Log Bay by a vacationing Long Island woman.
“This is the most bizarre thing that’s ever happened to me,” Benack-Smith said Friday.
The reunion of ring and finger took 37 years, a retiree’s hobby, a little detective work and a small-town coincidence or two.
The bauble’s journey started in 1970, when Benack-Smith graduated from Hudson Falls High School.
Like generations of teens before and since, she and her friends spent much of that summer hanging out on the Knapp Estate, partying, sunning themselves on the rocks and swimming in Log Bay.
Apparently, the ring slipped off her finger there in the water without her ever noticing.
There it sat until last summer, when retired teachers Ed and Patricia Bates of Smithtown, Long Island, were on one of their frequent trips to Lake George.
Patricia Bates scanned the water with the underwater metal detector she had bought as a gift for her husband and unearthed a gold ring with a green peridot stone.
It was a class ring inscribed with the name of the school and the year, and had the initials “PAB” engraved on the inside.
“I didn’t even know where Hudson Falls was,” Bates said in a recent telephone interview. She looked the school up on the Internet and left a message on the voice mail over the summer, leaving her contact information.
When school started again, it so happened that one of the office employees was married to John Murray, a member of the Class of 1970.
He looked through his yearbook and saw that Pam Benack was the only girl with the initials “P.B.”
He called another former classmate, Rosemary Fallacaro, who had headed the reunion committee. Fallacaro knew that her niece, Hess, worked with Benack-Smith in the court office. She called her and told her to pass on the message to call Murray.
When Benack-Smith called, Murray asked her initials. When she told him they were “P.A.B.,” he told her about the sunken treasure Bates had discovered.
Benack-Smith was floored by the unlikelihood of her long-forgotten ring being discovered and by Bates’ thoughtfulness.
“She didn’t have to do that,” Benack-Smith said. “She could have just pawned it.”
Bates said she hoped someone would do the same for her in a similar situation.
To show her appreciation, Benack-Smith asked the Bateses to join her and her husband for breakfast at Steve’s Place when they came into town. The Bateses are building a home in Bolton, where they’ve decided to move permanently.
Bates said she was surprised to see that the ring still fit after so many years. In fact, it was a little big.
Benack-Smith thinks of it as a lucky ring now, and carries it around in a plastic bag, since it’s too loose to wear.
“I don’t want to lose it again,” she said.
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