Published: May 27, 2009 12:20 pm      

Man reunited with long-lost ring

Over 30 years after he graduated, Darrell Ramsey is finally wearing his East Bank High School class ring again.

The Beaver resident met last week with Dr. Sarah Umphress, a professor in biology, anatomy and physiology at WVU Tech, and Marsha Rucker, administrative associate to Dr. Stephen Brown, dean of the College of Business, Humanities and Social Sciences at Tech, to retrieve the 1976 ring.

Doing some gardening on a recent day at her home on Jackson Street in Montgomery, Umphress dug up an object that, upon cleaning, turned out to be an old class ring. The Illinois native saw the school name — East Bank — on the side of the ring. She wasn’t familiar, since EBHS was swallowed up into the Riverside High consolidation a decade ago, before her arrival on campus.

That’s when she turned to Rucker, who enlisted the help of Helen Bragg, an East Bank graduate. Later brought into the picture were Bragg’s son, Bob, and Pam Saunders Hudnall, the latter who graduated with Ramsey.

Once they located Ramsey, it was just a matter of reuniting him with his ring.

“I lost it right after graduation in 1976,” said Ramsey, a school bus driver. “I was playing basketball in the old Montgomery Grade School (the former city hall building), and I left my things there.

“When I went back, everything but the ring was there. I was so devastated.”

Ramsey says he is “absolutely ecstatic” that those involved took the time to retrieve and return the ring to him.

— E-mail:

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