ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Missing high-school ring discovered after 65 years

MATTOON, Ill.

If finding a high-school ring doesn’t seem like a big deal, consider this: Until a few days ago, the last time Dick Diedrich saw his ring, he was living near Chicago with his parents, and Harry Truman was in the White House.

Diedrich, 82, now has his Class of 1949 ring from J. Sterling Morton High School in Cicero, thanks to a Waukesha, Wis., man who returned it to him after finding it with a metal detector in a lake near his home.

The ring’s journey back to its proper owner in Illinois began with Mike Geiger’s phone call last month to the Mattoon home of Dick Diedrich and his wife of 60 years, Doris.

“He said, ‘I think I have something that goes back to your high school years,’” Dick Diedrich said. “At that point, the story with the ring popped into my head.”

It seems that back in high school, Diedrich exchanged rings with his then-sweetheart, Doris. He said she only took his ring off “when they were dissecting frogs” in biology class. In mid-1948, Doris put it on a shelf to wash her hands after biology class and when she turned around, the ring was gone, as was another girl in the washroom.

Geiger called, and explained to Diedrich that he was using a metal detector at a lake near his home when he discovered the ring and pulled it from the water.

Gieger did a little detective work, Diedrich explained. He contacted the school’s alumni association and was told that out of the 1949 class of about 1,500 students, there were two graduates with the initials R.D., including Richard “Dick” Deidrich.

Deidrich has continued to do research to make sure that the ring is, in fact, his. He said Geiger is convinced the ring is in the hands of the rightful owner.

Associated Press