Thomas Wray Kidd poses with a ring that was returned to him that morning after it was found in the sewage system of Roanoke Rapids, N.C. The ring was lost down the toilet 51 years ago.
AP PhotoGADSDEN, Ala. – Max Hammonds never quite believed the story of how his class ring had been lost, as told by a girl he’d let wear it.
She said she was wearing the ring on a chain around her neck when she was thrown into a lake while at band camp.
Hammonds got a call recently from a high school classmate who saw a story on The Gadsden Times’ website about the 1978 Emma Sansom High School class ring, found about 12 years ago by Ed Chadwick of Fort Payne. The ring had the initials LMH engraved inside.
“John Hand called, and he told me about it,” Hammonds said. “He asked me if my initials are LMH.”
Hammonds’ first name is Loyed, but he always has gone by Max, and most of his classmates did not know his first name.
“Then he asked me, ‘You haven’t lost a class ring by any chance, have you?” Hammonds said. “He told me the man had found it and had been looking for the owner. I asked him if it had a diamond in it. When I realized it was mine, it blew me away. I never thought I’d see that ring again, especially to find out it actually had been buried in the bottom of a lake.”
Hammonds was unable to get online that night to see the picture of the ring, but he was able to the next day.
“When I saw the picture, I definitely knew then,” he said.
Hammonds grew up in Alabama City and went to Emma Sansom High School. He originally was part of the class of 1977, but found out shortly before he was expecting to finish school that he did not have enough credits, so he stayed behind a year and was part of the class of 1978.
He had only had his 1978 class ring for a little while when he let a girl who went to school at Glencoe borrow it.
“We weren’t really dating or anything,” he said. “She just wanted to wear it.”
The girl went to band camp at Camp Comer in Mentone that summer and came back without the ring.
“She said two boys threw her off the dock and she lost it,” he said. “I didn’t really believe the story.”
Soon he started dating the woman he eventually married, and he had no class ring to let her wear – a tradition in that era.
“She never let me live that down,” Hammonds said, chuckling.
He and his wife, Tina, have been married 32 years. They live in Southside and have two children and two grandchildren.
Hammonds never expected to see the ring again, and most likely wouldn’t have if not for Chadwick’s persistence.
Chadwick, a scuba diver, was helping with a project to repair a piece of pipe at Camp Comer’s Lake Republic about 12 years ago.
The Boy Scout camp has been used by other groups for years for all kinds of camping activities, and Chadwick is a longtime Boy Scout leader. The camp wanted to lower the water level to make the repair.
In exchange for help in repairing the pipe, Chadwick asked if he could use his metal detector while the lake was lower.
He searched around the dock where the family cabins are and found the ring.
Chadwick contacted the school, and someone there told him no one with the initials LMH graduated in 1978.
He talked to others, and several students from the 1978 class looked in their yearbooks, but nobody was able to connect the ring to Hammonds.
Hammonds said he understands now how that happened. After he missed graduating with his 1977 class, he decided to drop out.
“That’s the reason my picture wasn’t in the yearbook,” he said.
Hammonds recently went to Fort Payne to meet Chadwick and pick up the ring.
“I couldn’t believe he had kept it that long,” Hammonds said.
He said given the current economy, a lot of people would have sold the ring. But after meeting Chadwick, he said he understands why he kept it.
“He said that he knew that for somebody, somewhere, that ring was sentimental, and he wanted to give one last try,” Hammonds said. “That speaks volumes for the kind of man he is. A lot of people wouldn’t even have tried to find the owner.”
Hammonds said he and Chadwick now have a bond – “I found my ring and I gained a friend.”
Chadwick said he feels the same way, and the two men hit if off when they met.
“I think I have found a friend for life,” he said.
Chadwick said he was thrilled to be able to return the ring to its owner.
“It’s been worth the wait,” he said. “I was about to give up, and I had people tell me I was stupid for not selling it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. If it was mine, I know I would have wanted it back.”
The Associated Press provided this story.