The Traveling Ring Story

My name is David Max and I am a Kearney State College graduate from the class of 1973. During my senior year I purchased a class ring. After I graduated from Kearney I went to Indiana University where I got my Master’s Degree in Athletic Training. After graduate school I was employed as the Athletic Trainer at California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson, CA.

One evening in early 1976 I took the ring off to wash my hands and left it on the sink. I remembered that I had left it while driving home but did not return to get it because the door to the training room was locked and I figured I would get it the next morning. When I got to work the next morning it was gone.

I did not think about it until I got a call September 19th, 1994, from my brother George, who lives in Shenandoah, Iowa. He had just returned from a week’s vacation in Wisconsin and there was a message on his answering machine from a Mary Jo Grant who lives in South Bend, Indiana and she had my ring.

I called Mary Jo as soon as George and I hung up the phone and she described it perfectly to me. She found me by calling the publicity department at Kearney State (which is now the University of Nebraska at Kearney) and spoke to a man named Don Briggs who was the Sports Information Director when I was a student trainer on the athletic teams. My initials were on the inside of the ring and that along with the graduation year 1973 helped Mr. Briggs to narrow it down to me. The last address that was on record for me was my parents’ address in Shenandoah, Iowa. I live in Irvine, CA. Mary Jo got George’s phone through information and George called me.

The story doesn’t end there. Mary Jo told me that the ring was actually found by her mother-in-law Merlissia Grant who lives in Yazoo City, Mississippi. I called Merlissia and asked her when and where she found my ring. She found it about seven years before embedded in the soft asphalt under the Yazoo City bridge. She saw something shiny stuck in the asphalt and dug it out. She took it home and put it in a drawer with the intention of giving it to Mary Jo and did not remember it until a recent visit Mary Jo made.

I now have the ring back after 18 years and several states later and it is in mint condition. Not only is the sequence of events that revolved around this ring amazing but it is the genuine honesty of the Grant family that has done a lot to restore my faith in human nature. I will always be grateful to Mr. "B" for taking the time to go through the records to track me down with the information he had available. Without his assistance the traveling ring would have never found its way home.