The ring was buried in Willow Park for the past 28 years. Marc Hurley, who discovered the ring, had a jeweler clean it up.

BENNINGTON, Vt. — Missie Baker remembers crying the night her boyfriend lost her 1984 class ring.

 

It was just two years after she graduated from New Lebanon (N.Y.) Central High School, when he was playing Frisbee in Willow Park. It slipped off his finger. They searched and searched until the sun went down but to no avail.

 

Now, thanks to a Bennington man with a metal detector, she has it back.

 

"It was a very important ring. I worked so hard for it. I cried when I lost it," the Lanesborough resident said last week.

 

Her senior year had been a difficult trial: She was homeless and working four jobs while staying focused on completing school. She saved up her money for the ring to celebrate the accomplishment.  

 

Eventually, she forgave her boyfriend for losing the ring and married him. For almost three decades, the ring was mostly forgotten.

 

"I hadn't thought about that ring in years," Baker said.

 

Just a few days before Christmas this year, she received a surprising phone call. Bennington resident Marc Hurley had found it and spent six weeks tracking her down.

 

"I'm an avid metal detectorist. I usually go into the heavily traveled area. But I started to wander a bit, went into a field and there it was, about 4 inches in the ground," Hurley said. 

 

On Saturday, Baker was reunited with her class ring.

 

"Now I'll get a beautiful necklace for it and wear it around my neck," Baker said. "It's an incredible Christmas gift."

 

But finding Baker wasn't an easy task, said Hurley. All he had to go on was her maiden name — Whitman — engraved on the inside.

 

"It was just one stumbling block after another," Hurley said.

 

First, New Lebanon had changed its mascot in the intervening years so when Hurley searched for the high school, he couldn't tell which New Lebanon it was. Eventually, he found out about the change and narrowed down the search..

 

He searched through possible Whitmans in the school district's five towns and posted on Facebook with no results.

 

"We found a Whitman but they weren't related," Hurley said. "We wrote the school district but they couldn't tell us much because of privacy. But they said we were on the right track."

 

The school directed him to Hancock, Mass. Hurley brought the ring with him when he went Christmas shopping and had it cleaned. He then tried to stop at Hancock Town Hall in hopes the town clerk could help but the office was closed. 

 

On his way back to Bennington, he decided to stop at Hancock Elementary School to see if anybody there knew Baker (he was still looking for Whitman). He was directed to Jan Derby, who with Nancy Derby, connected Hurley with Baker. The two met at Willow Park a few days later.

 

"It was worth the effort. It didn't cost me anything but it meant a lot to her," Hurley said. "I was more than glad to do it."

 

Hurley says he enjoyed the puzzle of returning the ring. When he took up metal detecting as a hobby, he determined that he'd try to return whatever he could to the rightful owner. He found 18 rings this year but Baker's was the only one with an engraving.

 

"That's pretty incredible. It's very nice of him," Baker said of getting her ring back.