Posted on 02/17/2020 11:33:54 AM PST by Red Badger
Feb. 14 (UPI) -- A Maine woman who lost her then-boyfriend's class ring in 1973 was reunited with the precious item after it was found buried in a park in Finland.
Debra McKenna, 63, said her then-boyfriend, Shawn, gave her the Morse High School ring before he headed to college in 1973 and she accidentally left it in a bathroom at the Porteous, Mitchell & Braun Co. department store in Portland only a few months later.
McKenna and Shawn married in 1977 and remained together until he died in 2017 after a long fight with cancer.
The woman said the ring was long forgotten when the Morse High School Alumni Association received a message from Marko Saarinen, who explained he had found the ring buried under 8 inches of dirt while he was using his metal detector in a forested park in Kaarina, Finland.
The ring bore the name of the school and the initials "S.M.," which the alumni association determined could only have been Shawn McKenna.
"There was a lot of weeping when I learned that someone found it and made the effort to reach out and find me," McKenna told the Bangor Daily News.
Saarinen put the ring in the mail and McKenna received it this week.
McKenna said she does not know how the ring ended up in Finland. She said her husband spent some time in the country, but it was 20 years after the ring was lost.
"Shawn used to say there's no such thing as coincidences," McKenna said.
Classmate of mine threw something over the side and watched his ring fly out past it.
My fingers grew larger and I couldn’t wear mine. Sold it for gold content and gave the money to my wife.
ditto
LOL... mine never returned it either... except were still married some 30 years later... Not commenting beyond that :-) ha ha
God bless the man that found it.
If it isnt taken off the finger it wont be lost. That said my daughter and her husband wear rubber wedding bands when they work.
My dad never wore a wedding ring. Married in 1950. He said if you work with your hands you can lose a finger.
I don't believe that came across,*quite* the way you meant...😀
Yup...you couldnt wear them in most factories.
Are you saying high school rings migrate?
Too bad it didn’t sprout more wedding rings. :)
However, I gave one of my GF's one of my cars (1935 water-injected Ford) and, by the time I returned 3-months later from Paris Island, she had wrecked it...
I had a summer job at Krystal hamburgers and saved all my money just to buy it. Then lost it................
Ditto... but my ex-gf had told me she had pawned it while I was in bootcamp ..
>,<
My Wife and I rented a house at the Jersey shore 15yrs ago, and my kids begged me to bring my metal detector to the beach one day. I usually hunt early in the morning to avoid the millions of comments and interruptions.
On one particular day, I found a mans wedding ring and I was thrilled......for a second or two. Then I imagined how hard it must have been for this guy to tell his wife he lost his ring. As luck would have it, on the day I was hunting during mid-day, a woman approached me and asked if I had found any rings. She described the ring I found to a T. Turns out it was lost a week prior when her sister and brother-in-law were visiting. She gave me the address and I mailed it to them. Never heard a word from them. No matter, I did the right thing and it felt good.
Yeah, "lost" probably like mine was "lost" in 1973. My girlfriend had shown me class rings of her past boyfriends when we first met. Then when I got ready to leave she couldn't find my ring.
Actually, I feel guilty about how I left her. I was in her bedroom for a last go at it with my brother out in the truck waiting for me to say goodbye.
Well, I looked her up on facebook or myspace or somewhere online several years ago and I really dodged a bullet. She looked like she had been rode hard and put away wet.
I got lucky another time too. A girl I went out with a couple of times in high school was later found guilty of felonious animal abuse. She and her husband left their home and a kennel full of dogs to starve to death before they were discovered. He husband fled the state for four or five years to avoid prosecution.
I have to go in some manufacturing and machine spaces. No jewelry.
The only piece I have is a wedding ring. It stays in a wallet compartment.
Got it. Just saying I have never seen s woman take her wedding or engagement off in a public restroom.
Maybe he bought a replacement ring which he lost 20 years later in Finland.
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