http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APS...D8G5LO6G0.html
Four decades later, lost ring comes back in the mail
03/05/2006
Forty years ago, Emma Benford may have taken off her gold college class ring to wash her hands, something nurses do quite a bit. At least, that's how Benford speculates that she lost the ring.
She has the it back now. It arrived in the mail a month ago, sent by a German goldsmith who at one point planned to melt it down.
The ring vanished while Benford was living on a military base in Germany, where her U.S. Army officer husband, Jewell Benford, was stationed from 1966 to 1968.
She doesn't remember exactly when it went missing. "Most of the time, I wore it," she said. But in those days she had her hands full with a young son and daughter, and a job as school nurse at the American School.
After the stint in Germany the family came back to the United States. The Benfords raised a family and moved many times over the years. Two decades ago, they retired in Astoria.
Meanwhile in Germany, about a dozen years ago, Regina M. Jaene, a goldsmith in the town Schieder-Schwalenberg, purchased the ring from someone who brought it into her shop.
She intended to melt it down, but didn't get around to it. So, she put it away in a box with other small gold objects.
Finally, a few months ago, she took it out. She noted the blue stone and the engraving on the gold.
It said, "BS 1957, Nazareth College, Louisville, Ky." There was a pelican, too, the symbol of charity used by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, an order of Roman Catholic nuns who ran the Catholic women's college when Benford was a student.
Jaene tracked down the college on the Web, and school officials identified the initials inside the band — E.E.M. — as those of Emma Elinor Mayes. But the alumni office was having no luck tracking down Emma Benford.
Finally, a college official turned to the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., where Benford had grown up.
A Dec. 27 story attracted the attention of a friend of Benford's sister, who lives in Louisville. That closed the loop.
"Your ring is now coming back to you," Jaene wrote to Benford. "It's a great pleasure for me to return it."
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