Missing class ring finds way back to owner
Published: April 30, 2007
Nearly 30 years after her time as a student drew to a close, memories of Lynne Everhart’s time at Hedgesville High School came flooding back to her this week in a rush of purple and gold.
A series of coincidences and the honesty of an anonymous man brought the lost class ring of the 1979 graduate back to her hand this week.
“Of course, I cried,” said Everhart, still in a state of disbelief.
It was about 25 years ago that she lost the piece of jewelry, a gold ring adorned with the Hedgesville Eagle mascot and her birthstone — an amethyst — and her name engraved in script lettering inside the band.
Everhart believes it was about 1982 that the ring likely slipped off the pinky finger of her husband, who worked part-time at the former Texaco station in Marlowe.
Since it went missing, Everhart would joke that her husband had hawked her ring long ago any time the subject of the traditional piece of jewelry was broached.
Now employed as a secretary at her alma mater, Everhart left work early on Wednesday, leaving a substitute secretary in her place. Before the day was over, a gentleman stopped by the school with a class ring in a box — placed there for safe keeping when he found the ring more than 20 years ago.
Everhart said that it’s not uncommon for missing rings to be returned to the school, but those that come in are usually only two to three years old, at the most.
The returned ring was passed on to Hedgesville Principal Don Dellinger, who solicited the help of some keen-eyed students to read the inscription inside the band. Though the inscription included Everhart’s maiden name, Dellinger instantly knew it was hers, having grown up in the same area and around the same time as she had.
“It fell in the right person’s hands,” Everhart said.
Dellinger was excited to return the long-lost ring to its rightful owner, she said, and brought it out to her before 8 a.m. Thursday.
No one in the office knew the name of the man who returned it.
In 2006, Everhart purchased a class ring for one of her sons, a senior in high school. It, too, was lost, but is protected under a new replacement program offered by the jeweler.
“After finding this ring, I’m probably going to turn around and order my son’s,” she said. “You don’t think it means much to you, but it really does.”
Having graduated from Hedgesville and now working there each day, Everhart said her ring has even more sentimental value. “I still look down,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
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