Thomas Wray Kidd from North Carolina is being reunited with a piece of jewelry and a part of his past he thought was gone forever.
Kidd, now 67 and retired, has not seen his Jackson High School Class of 1962 ring since he gave it to his girlfriend half a century ago, and she accidentally dropped it into her toilet mid-flush.
The girlfriend, Dianne Shearin, was aghast. Her father had a plumber pull the toilet and snake the pipes. “The plumber finally told them, ‘Hey, that ring is gone,”‘ Kidd recalled in an interview.
It was not gone for good though. When a storm pipe collapsed recently and a repair crew responded, a foreman found the long lost ring. It was just a few blocks from where it had gone into the sewer in 1960.
The ring was taken to a local jewelry store, where three hours were spent cleaning it back to a bright gold.
The ring bore the initials TWK and a hunt began to find the owner. There weren’t many possibilities. Only 25 students graduated from Jackson High in 1962, a few years before the school closed.
Mr Kidd got a call from a former classmate who told him about the ring. Then the jeweler called, offering to mail it or deliver it personally when he visited family in he area.
“Mr Kidd said, ‘Just wait and bring it to me,’ which I’m glad he did because I want to see the look on his face when he’s reunited with his ring after 51 years,”
Mr Kidd is impressed with the honesty in getting the ring back to its owner. He is also happy he will once more be able to give it to the woman he calls his “soul mate and best friend.”
Despite the toilet mishap, Kidd married Dianne Shearin in 1964. They’re still married today.
