Three decades later, class ring finds its way home

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Last winter, Ralph Gulliver of Dover-Foxcroft decided to make “one, final attempt” to locate the owner of a high school ring that has been in his possession for nearly three decades.

The story began 29 years ago when his wife, Eunice Gulliver, found a Hampden Academy Class of 1974 ring, with initials, “somewhere out near Freese’s, at the mall on Union Street,” Gulliver told me.

The Gullivers immediately contacted Hampden Academy but were unsuccessful in finding out the name of the ring’s owner.

They checked the lost-and-found advertisements and over the years, even went to the libraries in Hampden and Bangor, searching yearbooks to locate the owner, all to no avail.

Every once in a while, Ralph Gulliver said, he’d come across the ring again, and make yet another attempt to learn the identity of the owner.

Now retired, Gulliver decided to make one last, earnest effort to return the ring.

So, once again, he called Hampden Academy.

“Maybe it was the right season, or the right time,” he said, “but this time I found a young lady who was really helpful.

“She went through the yearbooks and came up with the name George Malone.

“I looked in the telephone book, and there was no Malone in Hampden. But I did find one in Winterport, so I called and left a message.”

That Winterport resident is John Malone.

He returned Gulliver’s call and informed him his brother, retired U.S. Army 1st Sgt., George J. Malone Jr., lives in Copperas Cove, Texas.

“I got the address and shipped him the ring,” Gulliver said.

“But you know, I got nervous because, at the time I mailed it, there was a long line at the post office, and I didn’t insure it.

“I thought, after all this time, have I messed this up?”

He had not because, shortly thereafter, George Malone called Ralph Gulliver and “told me he was extremely pleased to have the ring back,” Gulliver said.

So pleased, in fact, was the Bangor native and Hampden Academy graduate, he e-mailed the Bangor Daily News to publicly thank Gulliver “for finding my high school ring and hunting me down, in exile.”

Malone believes this story is one “about the determination of our true Mainers.

“This ring was last seen somewhere in Bangor,” Malone wrote. “It was rumored that it, somehow, was thrown into the river, near State Street, in Bangor.”

By whom, he does not say.

Recognizing the “numerous attempts” Gulliver made “to locate the right owner … it does my heart good to know that men like Ralph still live in Maine,” Malone wrote, because “I now have my high school class ring.”

Malone hopes to meet Gulliver next summer, “if I have the chance to get home.”

Although he is officially a Texan, Malone wrote that in his heart he will “always be a Mainer.”

Gulliver believes “what made this a really good story was how exceptionally pleased he was to get his ring. I’m glad we made the effort. It had a good ending. He was so happy to get his ring back, even if it was supposed to be on the bottom of the Kenduskeag Stream.”

Since the June concert was canceled due to rain, reports Gaynor Reynolds of Ecotat Gardens, “we’re pleased to offer a rain date option” for the August concert.

The Penobscot Wind Ensemble performs at 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 9, at Ecotat Gardens and Arboretum at the intersection of Route 2 and Annis Road in Hermon.

The rain date is the same time on Monday, Aug. 16, at Ecotat.

Reynolds wants you to know that “the gardens are ever-changing, with something always in bloom so, again, there’s the opportunity for music and flowers, which makes for an enjoyable summer evening,”

The third-, fourth- and fifth-graders at Brooksville Elementary School will be earning money for their March 2005 Alaska trip when they participate in a craft fair sponsored by Brooksville Union Church Evergreen Cemetery from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. today at Brooksville Community Center in South Brooksville.

They will have breakfast and lunch food available and baked goods for sale.

Working with teacher Nada Lepper, family members and community friends as well as applying for grants and receiving support from folks in Alaska, the pupils have raised $10,000, which is about a third of what they need to take this educational excursion.

For more information about this project, call Lepper, 359-2096.

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.