Just curious, how many of you still wear your class ring, or even know where it is?

I couldn’t resist asking this in the class Facebook group and I got more answers than I expected, including some crazy ones! 

Let’s start with Nancy Keppler Heitschmidt: “Mine is in a sewer in south Chicago.”

Of course, I couldn’t let that one pass and went back to Nancy to get the rest of the story: “I had taken it off to replace it with my engagement ring! I must have put it in my pocket and we figured it fell out of the car or someplace into the gutter outside of his mother's house in South Chicago. We looked and looked but I kind of liked the engagement ring to be right where it was.” She added, “Of course we got divorced 16 years later…” 

I guess better a class ring than an engagement ring going down the drain—even if the marriage ends up going down the drain, too.

Then there was Bob Hinderer: “Lost mine in Fall of ‘65 when my car was stolen.”

And Sharon Ralph Gingras: “I lost mine years ago on South Blvd and who knows where it might have landed.” Gene Tanabe lost his in the 70’s. Mary Martin Covell lost hers, too. (I’m sort of guessing that none of these rings was on a finger when it got lost.) 

There were a couple of classmates in the “don’t know” category—Cherie Olson Major and Jackie Pozywak Sage—and I’m sure there are a lot more we didn’t hear from who would say the same.

Many of the other classmates who chimed in know exactly where their ring is: in their jewelry box. Diane Ellis Racano, JoAnn King Okey, Dawn Cole Kirk, Donna Korzuck Crosswait, and Martha Walters Sayre. Duane Brown’s is even safer than that: in a leather pouch locked up in his safe, and Colleen McLean Calver’s is in a safety deposit box, destined for a grandchild.

Judy Otts Dowding and Shaya Gardner-Hayum passed theirs on to their daughters. 

Because they were expensive, lots of us never had one. Cindy Burke Elder’s parents gave her a pearl and diamond ring instead, which she still wears, and Patricia Schneider Mannor said her choice was the Omega yearbook or a class ring. She says now, “SO glad I chose the yearbook”.

Pamela Conn Hyde has two. One belonged to her husband, our late classmate, Damon Hyde, and her own was turned into a charm for her bracelet. 

But Bonnie Baylis Trap had the last word and maybe you can relate: “Have mine, but it doesn’t fit any more!"

Maggie House Conger's class ring