The Story of a real life “Fellowship of the Ring”
Shepherd High School class ring returned to owner 25 years after it was lost
Back in May 2015, business owner Helen Chase asked her friends Joyce and Larry Noyes to find the former owner of a Shepherd High School class ring so that she could return it to her. Their interest piqued, they accepted the ring and began their research.
Larry Noyes is a local historian and a former president of the Shepherd Area Historical Society. His wife, Joyce, a former teacher, says that he loves “a good mystery.”
The only clues were the letters and words which had been inscribed onto the ring. They could identify it as a Shepherd High School ring, there was the year 1988, and the name “Eva.”
Larry began his search via the 1988 Shepherd High School yearbook, but didn't find an Eva.
Next, the Noyes’ daughter, Lisa, posted a picture of the ring on Facebook with the request that anybody who recognized it or might know the former owner contact her. Lisa says that within a few hours she had gotten leads which lead her to Eva Marie Mallay, who also turned out to be the friend of mutual friends on Facebook.
Lisa wasn't sure how Eva would feel about someone reaching out to her with questions about a lost ring, but made the connection. She asked Eva to describe the ring, and when she could explained that her parents had it, and that they were trying to find the former owner.
Eva had attended Shepherd High School until her Junior year, then moved. She graduated from Alma High School. She now lives in Grand Rapids. The ring holds extra special sentimental value because her grandmother had given it to her as a gift. Her grandmother passed away just a few months ago.
On the afternoon of Saturday, Eva and the Noyes’ met inside the Village of Shepherd’s Little Red Schoolhouse Museum during the town’s Shepherd Maple Syrup Festival. Amidst the hustle and bustle of a village wide celebration, as well as a crowd of visitors inside the museum, the four finally met in person and the ring was returned to Eva. Teary-eyed, Eva slipped the ring onto her finger, calling it a magic slipper test.
Eva later posted on her Facebook page:
Finally reunited with my class ring after its been missing for 25 years! Thank you so much to everyone involved in making this happen. To some it may be just a class ring but for me, it’s sentimental beyond what many could imagine.
I am so very grateful.
I’m not sure what went through Eva’s mind 25 years ago when she first discovered that her ring was missing, but it seems like human nature to try to cope with the loss of an object by accepting it and then moving on. We try to tell ourselves that we’ll never see that thing we’ve lost again, either nobody is ever that lucky, people aren’t honest, or we refer back to that old unofficial rule of “finders, keepers.”
But, here is evidence that perhaps some objects are not lost forever. Perhaps, instead, they take a little bit of a side trip on their way back to you. In this case, it took just a little bit of honesty and an interest in helping someone out to carry the ring from Eva, to Helen Chase’s Lost and Found bin at the Trillium in Mount Pleasant, to Larry and Joyce Noyes, and then back to Eva again.
