After graduating from high school in Mount Airy, Edward Morgan’s military career took him around the country and the world.
However, the Mount Airy High School ring for the class of 1961 that he lost as a student moved just a few miles before it was returned in December.
Morgan isn’t sure when he lost the ring, but said it must not have been long after he bought it during his junior year.
He ordered another and promptly forgot about the first one, until he was approached at a class reunion for the school last year.
After high school, he moved out of the area and served 21 years in the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. His career took him to Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana and an island in the Pacific Ocean near Midway.
After leaving the Coast Guard, he worked for the U.S. Post Office in Fort Myers, Fla., for 25 years before retiring about five years ago. He and his wife still live in Fort Myers.
When he returned to Maryland for his 50th reunion in September, he was approached by classmate Priscilla Arnold, who asked if he’d lost his class ring when he was in high school.
When Morgan told Arnold that he had, she put him in touch with Steve Duvall of Damascus.
Duvall has been an enthusiast of amateur metal detectors since the mid 1970s, and has found numerous rings, coins and other items.
He said he likes the “quiet serenity” of the pastime.
“It’s a nice hobby if you’ve got time to do it,” Duvall said.
Duvall found Morgan’s ring, engraved with his initials, on a ballfield in the early 1980s near where the high school had been. The site is now Mount Airy Middle School.
Although Duvall found the ring years ago, he didn’t get serious about trying to find the owner until he retired in 2000. After several years, he got a break.
Duvall’s mother bowled at a bowling alley in Mount Airy, where she met Arnold, a fellow 1961 graduate of Mount Airy High School who offered to check her yearbook for anyone matching the initials on the ring.
She came up with Morgan’s name and tried unsuccessfully to get ahold of him.
“I thought that was the end,” Duvall said.
Arnold played down her role in the process of returning the ring, saying her only contribution was not throwing away Duvall’s number in the nearly three years between when she figured out who the ring belonged to and when she finally saw Morgan at the reunion.
“It’s kind of neat that he could give it back after 50 years,” she said.
Finally, in September, Morgan got Duvall’s information from Arnold and gave him a call. The two men weren’t able to meet before Morgan returned to Florida, but made plans to get together when Morgan returned to visit family in December.
They met at the Olde Town restaurant — the same restaurant that Morgan and his friends frequented years before.
Morgan was surprised to see what good condition the ring was in.
“It looks almost just like when I bought it,” he said.
He was thankful to Duvall for holding onto the ring for so long and for the effort it took to track him down.
“I was really impressed that someone would go to all that trouble for someone he didn’t know,” Morgan said.
rmarshall@gazette.net
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