Lost And Found

These stories, compiled by Alejandra Merheb ’01 and Rebekah Carter, were originally published in the November-December 2005 issue of Texas Aggie  magazine.

Aggies share their stories of the disappointment of losing their Aggie Rings and the joy—and sometimes amazing circumstances—of how it found its way home.

If you have an Aggie Ring story you'd like to share with the Aggie Network, email The Association of Former Students at AggieNetwork@AggieNetwork.com.

Return of the Ring
submitted by Gretchen Perrenot ’96 and reprinted with permission from The Dallas Morning News
The photo listed third on the right is of Michael and Elizabeth Pursell with their son, Jon, who helped Gretchen recover her lost Ring.

Like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, Texas A&M graduates are crazy about their Rings. From the moment they enroll, students covet the shiny, circular bands that symbolize Aggie pride. Once they earn their Class Rings,
they wear them proudly — years and years after they've graduated and no matter what other jewelry enters their lives. Any Aggie Ring is special. However, my Aggie Ring is extra-special.

My father (Texas A&M Class of '72) had given his mother an Aggie sweetheart Ring, a women's replica of his own Ring featuring his Class Year. Sweetheart Rings could be given to wives, fiancées or mothers of male students. My dad's Class was the last to order them.

Mygrandmother didn't wear her Ring often, and it remained in perfect condition. Being the first woman to graduate from A&M in my family (and being a big-time daddy's girl), I opted to wear that Ring rather than order my own. During my senior year and for my first year out of school, that Ring and I were pretty much inseparable.

Then I lost it.

It hurt to lose something so special to my family, and it hurt almost as much not to have an Aggie Ring on my finger. So I went to The Association of Former Students' Web site to order a new one, and there I found an area to report lost and found Rings.

Almost six years later, my Ring and I were reunited. A woman who lived in Philadelphia came across it in her husband's jewelry box—he had found it on the ground two years earlier just before they moved from Dallas to Philly. In the big rush of the move, he just put it in the box and forgot about it.

A year later, the couple bought a house and had their belongings sent from Dallas to Pennsylvania. Another year later, they finally opened the box with the jewelry case in it. 

"After spending five years in Dallas, I immediately understood how important an Aggie Ring would be to its owner, so I was determined to find its rightful owner," the woman told me in an email. "To my delight, I found a lost Ring Web registry and put your Ring on it immediately. I am so glad we found you and can return your Ring to
you promptly."

At the time this article was written, The Association of Former Students reunited about 25 to 30 owners with their Rings each year through the lost and found program. Once a Ring is found, The Association works with Class Agents or checks The Association database to try to find the person whose name is on the inside of the Ring.

They get calls from people who have found Rings in public restrooms or while using metal detectors or scuba diving. 

There's still a four-year gap where I don't know what my Ring was doing, but thanks to The Association and to
a wonderful woman who took the time to find me, I got it back in the end.

Moral of the story: Don't lose your Ring. But if you do, be sure your information is up to date with The Association of Former Students.

Go Fish
submitted by Trent Bishop ’94
A photo of Trent and his friend who found his Ring is listed second on the right.

On January 29, 2005, a group of three friends and I set out on a fishing trip at South Padre Island for my birthday. My wife, Hollie '93, greeted us at the dock as we wrapped up a cold and wet day of fishing. When she asked who had caught the most fish, I reached up to slap her a high five. It was at that point that my Aggie Ring flew off my finger and into the Laguna Madre. A good day of fishing had just turned bad.

We marked the spot where we thought it went in, and although the temperature was chilly, I went in after it. After 10 minutes in the water, I realized that my body could not take the cold water much longer. I made a mental note of the spot and planned to resume the search once the temperatures warmed up. 

A few months later, I was at church visiting with an Aggie friend named Mark Fryer '74. The conversation turned to the story of my lost Ring. Mark immediately got a spark in his eye and said that he was a certified scuba diver. It turns out that he also owns a large sail boat and keeps current on his scuba certification so that he can maintain the boat and perform any work that must be done underwater. He told me that as soon as the waters warmed, he would meet me on the island for a Ring hunting excursion. 

Although it had been quite some time since Mark and I had visited about his offer, I called Mark in May to let him know that Hollie and I were going to be on the island for the weekend. Incidentally, Mark also had plans to be there and was available to conduct about a three-hour dive on a Saturday morning. We agreed to meet at the dock at 9:30 a.m.

We both knew the odds were very much stacked against us, but we refused to believe that it could not be found. Mark arrived with his scuba gear and a long PVC pole with a rope tethered to the pole. He asked me to give him my best recollection of the spot where the Ring went in. He told me that he would plant the pole at that spot, and then work in a circular pattern around the pole so as to keep oriented underwater. Mark made an entire circle around the pole during the first hour. His wife, DeEtta, Hollie and I waited anxiously on the dock occasionally catching sight of him as he worked the muddy floor of the bay. 

Shortly before 11 a.m., Mark suddenly surfaced with a hand full of muck and an Aggie Ring on his finger. I immediately jumped in to thank him! He later told me that the Ring was buried in about 6-8 inches of muck. As he dug his hand down into the mud, his finger went directly into the hole in my Ring; it was just four to five feet away from the spot where he planted the pole.

Words cannot express my gratitude to Mark Fryer. Although he was just as excited as any of us to have found the Ring, his generosity and willingness to help a fellow Aggie is a testament to everything Texas A&M University stands for. 

Family Tree
submitted by Dan Whatley ’78

While touring agricultural companies in California, our group of 40+ agricultural economic students made a side trip to Sequoia National Park. Filled with mischief, an Aggie snowball war broke out under one of the towering giant redwoods called General Sherman.
 
As luck would have it, my tight-fitting '78 Class Ring slipped off during one of the numerous throws and was tossed somewhere under this beautiful, majestic redwood tree. After spending hours and a small fortune on flashlights from the park gift shop, we left that night without my Class Ring.
 
The Ring meant a lot to me. My grandmother had purchased it for me days before she entered the hospital ridden with cancer. Her last wish was to live long enough to know that I would graduate from Texas A&M. To make her wish come true, my last semester I took a heavy course load — 21 undergraduate hours — so that I could graduate that spring. The trip to California had been a short reprieve from study. Looking at my Ring would reinforce why I had to graduate that May: the last check my grandmother wrote made sure that her grandson had an Aggie Ring.  

After losing my Class Ring, a middle aged son took his mother to Sequoia National Park to see the beautiful, majestic redwood trees. This wiry 84-year-old grandmother, whose eyesight was still sharp, spotted a gold object glittering in the snow under the General Sherman tree. She had found my Ring.
 
After finding my Ring, the man tried repeatedly to convince A&M school officials that I did in fact exist, but for some reason, I could not be found in the school records. After months of relentless pursuit, in the summer of 1978 I received a letter from California asking if I had lost something. I immediately knew to what they were referring. A couple of weeks later, I received my Class Ring in the mail.

I have never forgotten this 84-year-old grandmother and her son who made sure that my Ring was returned. Thank you, Mrs. Brown, for your honesty and insistence that this Aggie Ring be reunited with its owner.  

The day before my May 5, 1978 graduation, our family buried my grandmother under the East Texas pine trees. To this day, I still wear the Ring she bought me with much pride and honor.

If Rings Could Talk
submitted by Phil Sims '75 
  
About eight years ago, while on naval reserve duty in Corpus Christi, I was at a local watering hole called the Executive Surf Club. While drying my hands in the restroom, my Ring came off and flew across the floor, making several audible bounces. After a frantic search of the facility, I turned up nothing, and had to assume that another patron picked it up and walked off with it.

Several months after filing a police report, I received a phone call from a Corpus Christi police officer telling me that he had found my Ring. Upon our meeting, he explained that he had been working a drug case with a local prostitute and saw it on a chain around her neck. Being a Sam Houston State grad, he recognized it as an Aggie Ring and knew that the young lady had not even finished high school, so he confiscated it. She told him that she had bought the Ring from another prostitute for $20. The officer said that he was familiar with the other lady as he had recently worked a case in which she had been shot in the face. If only my ring could talk, I'm sure it could tell quite a story!

Now as an airline pilot, I always place any metallic objects in my uniform hat prior to putting them through the x-ray. A short while after doing so recently, I noticed that I was not wearing my Ring. I spent the entire trip to Sydney convincing myself that I had left it at home. Upon my return, I could not locate it and deemed it MIA once again. Some time later, while hurriedly putting on my hat more firmly than usual, I felt the cold thump of a heavy metallic object on my bald pate. Upon removing my hat, out fell my AWOL Ring. It had been traveling the world wedged in the grommet of my hat!

Path to Duncan Field
submitted by Leah Davis Rush ’74 

This story is dedicated to my parents, A.W. “Head” Davis ’45 and Genita M. Davis who with love and pride gave me my Aggie Ring.

It happened at Bonfire in 1974, just a few months after I had graduated. My Aggie Ring simply fell off my finger while walking from the north side of the MSC to Duncan field.

Losing my precious Ring was bad enough, but hearing my very wise mother expound on the fact that she had warned me not to have the Ring sized to my pinky finger made me feel like an Aggie joke. My dad asked a friend of his who owned a metal detector to go over the path I walked that night. He found nothing, but every year around Bonfire time, I prayed that someone would kick up my lost Ring out of the dirt. When Bonfire was moved from Duncan Field to the Polo Field where the last Bonfire was held in 1998 and where the Bonfire Memorial now stands, I began to lose hope that my Ring would ever be found.

Twenty years later, my father called me one day summoning me to his law office. Never in my life had my father raised his voice to me, but when he asked me to come see him, I knew it was something of importance. Rather anxious about the meeting, I arrived at his office to find my mother sitting in front of his desk alongside a man I did not know. It was most unusual that my mother would be there, and my mind began to question what was about to happen. I was introduced to this man, and my father explaining that Dr. Williams was a psychologist at Texas A&M University and provided counseling services to students. My first thought was that my parents, always with my best interest at heart, were overtly suggesting that I needed professional help.
 
Dr. Williams put his hand in his pocket and brought out an Aggie Ring—my Aggie Ring—cupped in the palm of his hand. He explained that metal detecting was a hobby, and he had found the Ring in the meridian on Lewis Street merely a few feet from Duncan Field. I was dumbfounded and specifically remember the smile on daddy’s face as though we had just beat Texas. Dr. Williams said seeking the owner of the Ring was easily accomplished. The Ring was still clearly inscribed with my name, Leah N. Davis, and led him to call The Association of Former Students. With no current address available, he was directed to contact my dad who had served as The Association’s president in 1983.

It was a great thrill to once again have my beloved Aggie Ring, and the occasion that my dad, mother and Dr. Williams planned for its return made it an event I shall never forget. 

Special Delivery
submitted by Karen Carawan ’00

One morning, I was packing a control box for a timer into a box to send to the manufacturer to get it repaired. I packed the box full of peanuts to ensure that the timer would arrive unharmed. It was cold in our office that day, and I had noticed that my Aggie Ring was more loose than normal. I didn’t realize that I didn’t have my Aggie Ring on until late that afternoon. I looked everywhere—even in our parking lot—all to no avail.  
 
The next day, I was reminded of the box I had packed the day before. I thought, “Oh, no … I bet my Ring fell in the box, and I never realized it.” Apparently, it slipped off my finger into the box with the timer as I was transferring the peanuts from the bag to the box. The box was now on its way to Arkansas and had been sent right after I finished packing it. I immediately looked up the name and phone number of the company in Arkansas and called them to see if they had found my Ring. They said they had not yet received the box, but would look for my Ring when it arrived.

A week went by without hearing a word. I thought the box had been lost in the mail, that someone had taken the Ring or that they simply threw the Ring out with the peanuts. Finally, I received a box from the company, and inside was the timer control box that had been repaired. Also in the box was a tiny Ziploc bag taped to the side with my Aggie Ring inside.

I was so grateful! I immediately called the company and thanked them for returning my Ring. They were more than happy to help and understood how much the Ring meant to me.  

Lost in Translation
submitted by Chris Landeck '77

I lived in The Hague in 1985 and did a lot of windsurfing in the North Sea off the beach in Scheveningen. One evening after work I was down there, and before I went in the water, I put my Aggie Ring in my pants pocket and laid it on the beach with my gear bag. After I got home, I couldn't find my Ring and I realized that it must have fallen out of my pocket onto the beach. I returned to the beach with a flash light and searched but didn't find it. I reported the lost Ring to the police department and checked back with them several times over the next few weeks, but nobody had reported finding my Ring.

About six months later just before I was scheduled to move to Indonesia, I decided to check one more time before ordering a replacement. I stopped by the police station to check and was told that someone had reported finding a Ring with a "shield" on it.

My Ring had been found by a 6-year-old German girl playing on the beach. The Dutch police gave me her family's phone number, and I contacted them and drove to Germany to get my Ring back. I've never figured out why they didn't look my name up in the phone book and call me, but I guess then it wouldn't be such a good story.

From the Ashes
submitted by David Pustejovsky ’00

During the Christmas holidays last year, I was out on a rugged, wild-man, deer hunting weekend in Central Texas. The air was cold, and the wind was crisp. There were seven of us participating in the weekend ritual, including two other fellow Ags. The first evening’s hunt had ended, and the warming sun had left our company. It very dark and very cold, so a blazing campfire was in order. I took it upon myself to be the “Firemeister.”

The campfire roared through the evening until the early morning hours. It was by far the greatest, strongest, most glowing campfire I had ever built. But there was good reason behind the ferocity of the fire that night: it had been given a piece of Aggieland from the hands of a member of the Class of ’00.

The morning after that glorious blaze, I awoke and realized immediately that I did not have my Aggie Ring on my right hand. I looked in the deer stand, the pickup, the camper, everywhere and did not find the Ring. Then, I realized what must have been its fate. It had been consumed by the campfire the night before.

I dug through the ashes and smoldering chunks of charred wood and found no Aggie Ring. I was depressed. I had to come to grips with the fact that I would have to buy another Ring, and the Ring I had dunked only a few years earlier was gone.

We departed from the deer lease. A couple of days passed, and then I received a phone call from my mom. She had found a black solid object in the campfire pit at the deer lease. My mom is not an Aggie, but she realized what that Ring meant to me. She knelt on her hands and knees and dug through a pit of ashes in hopes of finding a small piece of metal—and she did.

It was my Aggie Ring. A jeweler, a few days and a few bucks later, and my Ring was back to normal. I learned that the Spirit behind the Aggie Ring extends beyond only Aggies. Thanks, Mom! 

Security Clearance 
submitted by Lt. Col. Morris W. Asbill, Jr. '60, USAF (Retired)

This is not the usual Aggie Ring story. The setting is Udorn Air Base, Thailand, in 1968 during my Vietnam tour with the U.S. Air Force.

I was invited to visit some out-of-country communications sites in Laos because of my Group Communications staff position with the 504th Tactical Air Support Group, the forward air controllers.

All military personnel visiting any of these out-of-country sites were briefed on the strictest security and sanitized fully. This meant that we were to appear as civilians in every respect: no uniforms, no insignia of any kind, no caps, no military weapons. If I remember correctly, my military ID was even surrendered for this mission.

All of this was done late one evening with a planned departure of early the next morning.  Just before boarding our "no military markings" Jolly Green HH-53 helicopter, we were given another scrub down or look to make sure there were no military identifiers anywhere. Everything seemed a go for the mission, so we proceeded to the chopper pad by flight line van.

The chopper was already starting up as we exited the van and hurried to the chopper. We lined up to quickly board and as I boarded, I reached for the hand rail at the left side of the chopper door. My beautiful 1960 Texas Aggie Ring clinked proudly against the hand rail. I am sure I turned only one shade of pale with the realization that my military college Ring had been missed by everyone, including me, in the security briefing process. I remember saying to myself, "I can't eat it," so I just kept it on my finger. We proceeded to Laos and at least two sites that day before returning to base. 

Thank God there were no incidents to call attention to my Aggie Ring. Not a soul noticed it until we got back on the ground at Udorn Air Base, Thailand. I showed it to some of my fellow travelers, who couldn't believe how it had made it past the very thorough security checks.

This Aggie Ring story is about the one that should have been lost, temporarily, but was not.

A Big Event
submitted by Leonard “Chub” Eddy ’54
A photo of Chub and the students who gifted him his Ring is listed first on the right.

In early January 2004, I was diagnosed with cancer. My chemo treatments began immediately. While I responded well to the treatment, my weight loss was considerable. In February, I discovered I had lost my Aggie Ring. I seldom took it off. I had no idea where I lost it … it was just gone.

Outsiders do not realize what this Ring means to a Texas Aggie. Once, when I was on the campus to exchange an Aggie cap given to me to cover my bald head, I thought about ordering another Ring, but I was still very lean, and my granddad told me “you don’t put a $500 saddle on a $50 horse.”

In March, the Aggies had The Big Event weekend, and about eight of them came out to our house to dig a ditch to drain our back yard. We grilled hamburgers and visited, and during the visit, I told them about losing my Ring. We talked a little about it, but I never gave it much thought.

In October, one of the students called my wife and asked if I had received another Ring. When she told him I had not, he said they would like to make it a project to get one for me. She gave her approval with the stipulation that they could not use my name. They set up a booth on the day of the Colorado game and raised the money, more than enough for the Ring.

On a recent Sunday afternoon they came to our house. There were eight of them, all from A&M’s Circle K International — Alicia Threatt ’04, Amanda Garcia, Beth Zimmer, Chirag Gandhi, Cindy Carter ’07, Dien Le ’06, Erica Trojacek ’08, Jon Shaw ’07, Jose Arteaga ’06, Kirsten Uecker ’08, Lindsay Rosen, Mallory Smith ’07, Matthew Bargsley ’05, Michael Govea ’07, Michelle Osborne ’04 and Pam Hile ’05.

It was a well kept secret. When they presented me with the Ring, there was not a dry eye in the room. They had several hundred dollars left over, and they asked if they could donate it to the American Cancer Society in my name. Approval was humbly granted!

We are all proud to be Aggies, but to know that the school’s turning out these quality young people … it is wonderful! It’s the Spirit of Aggieland!