All our sheltering in place is leading to some interesting unintended consequences. People are slowing down and noticing small, but significant, things that might have been hiding in plain sight.
For example, a grandmother in Macon, Georgia, who makes fishing nets for a living recently rediscovered a 1974 Girls Preparatory School class ring in an old jewelry box in her bedroom.
She decided to search the web to try to locate the owner, who, it turns out, is an endocrinologist in North Carolina who grew up on Lookout Mountain.
Sharon Faircloth, proprietor of Bountiful Seines in Macon, says she found the ring on the side of a road as a teenager in the mid-1970s while walking her dog down a busy street near a hospital in Brunswick, Georgia.
"I had just gotten my own class ring and I remember thinking how sad I'd be if I lost it," Faircloth said.
Of course, there was no internet in the 1970s, and Faircloth said she had no clue how to locate the owner of the ring, which had an onyx stone overlaid with the initials GPS. Soon, she simply set the ring aside.
All these years later, while sheltering in place with her daughter and grandchildren in Macon, Faircloth found the ring as she was renovating her bedroom. It was in a small box with her own class ring - which she had thought was lost, too.
"I thought, 'Now, sit yourself down and see if you can find out where this ring goes to," said Faircloth. "So I Googled GPS."
The computer search pointed to Girls Preparatory School here, and Faircloth reached out through Facebook to GPS marketing communications manager Pamela Hammonds, who asked her to check for initials inside the ring.
"So, I got out my trifocals and held it under a bright light and saw the initials MKL," Faircloth said.
With that clue in hand, Hammonds searched computer records of the GPS Class of 1974 and identified alumna Mary Katherine Lawrence as the possible owner of the ring.
Hammonds immediately called Dr. Lawrence, who practices medicine in Morehead City, North Carolina.
Lawrence grew up in the Chattanooga area. Her late father, Joseph Lawrence, was one of the owners of the Lawrence-Doster Lincoln Mercury dealership on West M.L. King Boulevard that closed in 2006.
Dr. Lawrence, who lives in Newport, North Carolina, said she doesn't remember ever visiting Brunswick, Georgia, and has no idea how her high school ring wound up there.
She does remember losing the ring, though. It cost $70 and she knew her dad would not be happy that she lost it.
"My father was very money conscious," Dr. Lawrence said in an interview. "He bought me that ring, and I remember having guilt over losing it."
Dr. Lawrence said that even though she hadn't thought about the ring "in decades" she felt a sense of gratefulness upon getting it back.
"I was impressed with her [Faircloth]," Dr. Lawrence said. "She took the time to look and examine the ring and get the initials.
"It's been a fun story to pass around with my GPS friends," she added. "They all have stories of how they lost their class rings. One had hers stolen in graduate school in Manhattan. Another was out running in Boston and lost it when she was taking off her gloves. Now, this gives them hope they might one day get their rings back, too."
Both women say that were it not for coronavirus sheltering, this story might never have happened.
Faircloth said she feels strangely energized by being homebound.
"It's a total reset," she said. "It was meant to be. We needed it."
Meanwhile, Dr. Lawrence said she, too, is using the time to reconnect with old friends and understands Faircloth's optimism about the sheltering moment we find ourselves in.
"I, too, have been finding things from childhood and sharing things with old friends," she said. "I totally get what she is doing right now. I was the lucky recipient of her diligence."
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com.
Dr. Mary Katherine Lawrence, a native of Lookout Mountain who now lives in North Carolina, was surprised to receive her GPS class ring lost in the 1970s. / Photo contributed by Mary Katherine Lawrence via GPS.