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I did not find this but this is a treasure to the owner's descendents
Circle of life: A ring's journey
By Suevon Lee
Staff writer
Published: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 6:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 7:05 a.m.
The 10-karat gold piece, adorned with a delicate Wildcat head atop black onyx stone, was inscribed with the date 1928 and the initials N.S.
Plucked from the waters of Lake Weir last November, it was a rare find for one retired printer from Leesburg.
"After being in the water, it was dirty, but it cleaned up real nice," said William "Terry" Clark, 64, a treasure hunter. "I knew right away it was a class ring."
For 80 years, the ring sat undisturbed in the cool waters of Lake Weir, as the world outside moved on, from one era to the next.
Such a precious relic from the past wasn't going into any safe deposit box, nor was it going to be sold for the several hundred dollars it was worth, Clark thought.
No, he decided, that ring needed somehow to be returned to its owner's descendants.
Thus began the search for the ring's owner. Little did Clark know he wouldn't have to look very far.
- - -
Clark contacted Jewelry Works, a store in Leesburg owned by Chet and Roxanne Blackmon. Chet Blackmon, in the jewelry business the past 30 years, recognized the Wildcat emblem as the mascot of Ocala High School, which became Forest High School in 1969 and once was located where Marion Technical Institute is now housed on Fort King Street near the Historic District.
Blackmon, a graduate of the Ocala High School Class of 1969 - the last graduating class before Ocala H.S. became Forest H.S. - called up a high school classmate, Leo Smith, a private investigator who retired from the Marion County Sheriff's Office in 2006.
"Do these initials [N.S.] mean anything to anyone?" Blackmon, 57, asked Smith.
Smith put his sleuthing skills to the test, sending out messages on a Web site accessible only to fellow members of their high school class.
One suggestion that came back was that the ring belonged to longtime Ocala resident Nuby Shealy, a near-centenarian who graduated from Ocala High School in 1928. He ran a corner store in the Ocala National Forest.
But the ring was distinctly a woman's ring, judging by its design and small circumference.
So Smith plumbed his contacts and turned to Jan Jo Merians, the current activities director at Forest High School, and considered the school's resident historian. "I just think it's cool to find the history of this place," said Merians, a 1975 graduate of the school.
She collects yearbooks and happened to possess a copy of the 1928 Ocala High School yearbook. But there was a problem. No female student listed had a name bearing the initials "N.S."
That is, until she flipped to the back of the book, where she discovered a reference to "Norris Savage," whose first name was Lucy.
Merians relayed that information to Smith, who tracked down the daughters of Lucy Savage's brother, Samuel S. Savage Jr. Those daughters lived in Texas, and told Smith that their Aunt Norris had married a man whose last name was Robinson, and that the couple had a son named William Robinson.
William Robinson, Smith learned, had a daughter whose name was Dennie Ann Robinson.
And so they came to learn that Dennie Ann Robinson was not only living in Ocala, she had graduated from Ocala High School in 1969 - the same year as Chet Blackmon and Leo Smith.
"It was a whole series of flukes," Blackmon said.
- - -
With the help of Gale Manning Amorginos, a fellow classmate who was the "Willy Wildcat" mascot during their high school days, the men were able to track down Robinson.
"She was quite surprised and really just so happy. She was elated that we had found it," Amorginos said.
Smith remembers Robinson, now a kindergarten teacher at Greenway Elementary School, as fun-loving and outgoing during their high school days.
Those traits still very much define Robinson, a vivacious, energetic woman in her late 50s with a flair for theater and dance.
She was completely taken aback by the call she received last December, when she was told her grandmother's ring had been found in Lake Weir.
"I was flabbergasted," she said. "It's as if she brought me a birthday gift from the grave."
Robinson said her grandmother, who went on to become a real estate broker, was an independent, strong woman who never remarried after losing her husband early in their marriage.
The very fact that she went by her middle name, "Norris," indicates a tomboyish soul who was a member of the girl's basketball and baseball teams, the Literary Club and Glee Club. The quote Savage chose to accompany her senior class picture was "Mirth, with thee I mean to live."
On a recent Saturday morning, Robinson stood by the edge of Lake Weir, near a home her great-grandfather built - and where her grandmother, Lucy Savage, spent a carefree childhood.
Savage, who wore her hair in a short, pixie style, as was the fashion in the 1920s, spent her mornings gliding across the lake, swimming laps.
It was during one of these early morning swims, Robinson speculates, that the ring most likely slipped off her grandmother's finger and dropped into the lake, not to be found until 80 years later.
"It's probably been buried underwater and sand from 1928 to 2009," Robinson said. "That's why it's in such beautiful shape."
- - -
The Ocala High School Class of 1969 celebrates is 40th high school reunion this weekend. The event includes festivities Friday at the Boat Basin in the Ocala Boat Club Building and a Saturday night dinner and dancing gala at the Ocala Hilton.
Robinson will attend the affair, wearing her grandmother's Class of 1928 ring on her own slender hand.
No one is perhaps more thrilled to see the ring reunited with Robinson than Clark.
"It was all magical," he said. "I have returned rings, but not of this age. I felt like the grandmother was guiding the whole system. It was like she was in play to make sure it got to her granddaughter. That's the way I kind of felt."
He said Robinson contacted him to ask whether she could offer a reward.
"I said, 'No, the reward is finding the owner,' " Clark recalled. "I restored her faith in mankind, is what she told me. The way things are today in this world, I just didn't want a big reward. That's just me."
Clark won't divulge the exact spot in Lake Weir where he discovered the class ring, only that it was found within ankle-deep water.
Clark did request of Robinson two things: a copy of the photograph of her grandmother when she was 16, right around the time she lost her ring, and for a written account of the tale.
"My goodness, there's no words for that," Clark recalled recently. "Goodness, could you ask for any more?"
Circle of life: A ring's journey
By Suevon Lee
Staff writer
Published: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 6:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 7:05 a.m.
The 10-karat gold piece, adorned with a delicate Wildcat head atop black onyx stone, was inscribed with the date 1928 and the initials N.S.
Plucked from the waters of Lake Weir last November, it was a rare find for one retired printer from Leesburg.
"After being in the water, it was dirty, but it cleaned up real nice," said William "Terry" Clark, 64, a treasure hunter. "I knew right away it was a class ring."
For 80 years, the ring sat undisturbed in the cool waters of Lake Weir, as the world outside moved on, from one era to the next.
Such a precious relic from the past wasn't going into any safe deposit box, nor was it going to be sold for the several hundred dollars it was worth, Clark thought.
No, he decided, that ring needed somehow to be returned to its owner's descendants.
Thus began the search for the ring's owner. Little did Clark know he wouldn't have to look very far.
- - -
Clark contacted Jewelry Works, a store in Leesburg owned by Chet and Roxanne Blackmon. Chet Blackmon, in the jewelry business the past 30 years, recognized the Wildcat emblem as the mascot of Ocala High School, which became Forest High School in 1969 and once was located where Marion Technical Institute is now housed on Fort King Street near the Historic District.
Blackmon, a graduate of the Ocala High School Class of 1969 - the last graduating class before Ocala H.S. became Forest H.S. - called up a high school classmate, Leo Smith, a private investigator who retired from the Marion County Sheriff's Office in 2006.
"Do these initials [N.S.] mean anything to anyone?" Blackmon, 57, asked Smith.
Smith put his sleuthing skills to the test, sending out messages on a Web site accessible only to fellow members of their high school class.
One suggestion that came back was that the ring belonged to longtime Ocala resident Nuby Shealy, a near-centenarian who graduated from Ocala High School in 1928. He ran a corner store in the Ocala National Forest.
But the ring was distinctly a woman's ring, judging by its design and small circumference.
So Smith plumbed his contacts and turned to Jan Jo Merians, the current activities director at Forest High School, and considered the school's resident historian. "I just think it's cool to find the history of this place," said Merians, a 1975 graduate of the school.
She collects yearbooks and happened to possess a copy of the 1928 Ocala High School yearbook. But there was a problem. No female student listed had a name bearing the initials "N.S."
That is, until she flipped to the back of the book, where she discovered a reference to "Norris Savage," whose first name was Lucy.
Merians relayed that information to Smith, who tracked down the daughters of Lucy Savage's brother, Samuel S. Savage Jr. Those daughters lived in Texas, and told Smith that their Aunt Norris had married a man whose last name was Robinson, and that the couple had a son named William Robinson.
William Robinson, Smith learned, had a daughter whose name was Dennie Ann Robinson.
And so they came to learn that Dennie Ann Robinson was not only living in Ocala, she had graduated from Ocala High School in 1969 - the same year as Chet Blackmon and Leo Smith.
"It was a whole series of flukes," Blackmon said.
- - -
With the help of Gale Manning Amorginos, a fellow classmate who was the "Willy Wildcat" mascot during their high school days, the men were able to track down Robinson.
"She was quite surprised and really just so happy. She was elated that we had found it," Amorginos said.
Smith remembers Robinson, now a kindergarten teacher at Greenway Elementary School, as fun-loving and outgoing during their high school days.
Those traits still very much define Robinson, a vivacious, energetic woman in her late 50s with a flair for theater and dance.
She was completely taken aback by the call she received last December, when she was told her grandmother's ring had been found in Lake Weir.
"I was flabbergasted," she said. "It's as if she brought me a birthday gift from the grave."
Robinson said her grandmother, who went on to become a real estate broker, was an independent, strong woman who never remarried after losing her husband early in their marriage.
The very fact that she went by her middle name, "Norris," indicates a tomboyish soul who was a member of the girl's basketball and baseball teams, the Literary Club and Glee Club. The quote Savage chose to accompany her senior class picture was "Mirth, with thee I mean to live."
On a recent Saturday morning, Robinson stood by the edge of Lake Weir, near a home her great-grandfather built - and where her grandmother, Lucy Savage, spent a carefree childhood.
Savage, who wore her hair in a short, pixie style, as was the fashion in the 1920s, spent her mornings gliding across the lake, swimming laps.
It was during one of these early morning swims, Robinson speculates, that the ring most likely slipped off her grandmother's finger and dropped into the lake, not to be found until 80 years later.
"It's probably been buried underwater and sand from 1928 to 2009," Robinson said. "That's why it's in such beautiful shape."
- - -
The Ocala High School Class of 1969 celebrates is 40th high school reunion this weekend. The event includes festivities Friday at the Boat Basin in the Ocala Boat Club Building and a Saturday night dinner and dancing gala at the Ocala Hilton.
Robinson will attend the affair, wearing her grandmother's Class of 1928 ring on her own slender hand.
No one is perhaps more thrilled to see the ring reunited with Robinson than Clark.
"It was all magical," he said. "I have returned rings, but not of this age. I felt like the grandmother was guiding the whole system. It was like she was in play to make sure it got to her granddaughter. That's the way I kind of felt."
He said Robinson contacted him to ask whether she could offer a reward.
"I said, 'No, the reward is finding the owner,' " Clark recalled. "I restored her faith in mankind, is what she told me. The way things are today in this world, I just didn't want a big reward. That's just me."
Clark won't divulge the exact spot in Lake Weir where he discovered the class ring, only that it was found within ankle-deep water.
Clark did request of Robinson two things: a copy of the photograph of her grandmother when she was 16, right around the time she lost her ring, and for a written account of the tale.
"My goodness, there's no words for that," Clark recalled recently. "Goodness, could you ask for any more?"
