The ring was especially meaningful to Darlys because there were only seven students in the class, and by the time the two were seniors, Ferguson had consolidated with Le Grand and Dunbar to form LDF, which would later become East Marshall after a merger with SEMCO in 1992.

“We all got rings alike. I think maybe we had to pick the same style, but we all got the black onyx,” Darlys said. “We had started dating in ’59, got the rings in ’60 and he lost it in ’61. That’s basically the sequence.”

Despite Chuck’s mishap, the two still got married, had kids, grandkids and great-grandkids and have been happy continuing to live in the small town where they grew up, with the population now under 100. And while most people may have simply decided to write it off as a loss or try to replace it, Darlys never gave up on finding the ring.

“He felt bad about it, but maybe not as bad as I thought he should,” Darlys said. “I was down on my hands and knees looking through the grass like that, and actually, every single time I would see anybody up there with a metal detector, I would go talk to them.”

A close-up view of the long-missing class ring.

Years and years of inquiries to local treasure hunters got no results until last Friday, when Darlys saw Trent Banks from Le Grand, like so many before him, running his device through the grass. Once again, she offered directions the best she could: somewhere between the town sign, Main Street and the width of a football field was the long-missing class ring.

A half hour later, her phone rang.

“He had found it,” she said. “(It was) about five, six inches deep.”

All it took was a little water for the ring, which held up remarkably well over its 62-year hibernation, to look like new. Under a light, it was just as shiny as Chuck’s ring, and he had kept it in a jewelry box for years.

It’s a feel-good ending if there ever was one to a lengthy saga that spanned generations, and Darlys has made a new friend in Banks through the process who felt that God meant for him to be in Ferguson that day — although, she joked, she initially wasn’t sure if she should answer the call as she didn’t recognize the phone number.

“Think of all the circumstances. He was there. Darlys happened to drive by, see him and talk to him, give him her phone number, and he called a half an hour later and had found it,” Chuck said.

Darlys was also quick to admit she was “exceptionally sentimental” about the ring because of the circumstances surrounding the school consolidation, and to her, it was a symbol of Ferguson pride.

“We enjoyed our senior year, and we have many friends from our graduating class from LDF. And you know, in the long run, we’re basically glad that we had that experience. We hated it at the time, but we’re happy our kids and our grandkids all graduated from LDF and East Marshall,” she said.

No matter how hopeless the search seemed, Darlys never lost her faith that it would be found or her faith in the Lord above. And as someone at church joked Sunday morning, Chuck is finally out of the doghouse — this one, at least.

“I prayed about it, down, when I’m looking through the grass, you know, praying that I would find it, and all of those years, never found it,” she said. “But God did answer the prayer 62 years later.”

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.