Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

The Fellowship of

The Lee Ring

by Tommy Towery

Class of '64

The e-mail started out like many others in my computer’s mailbox. “I hope you can help me.” But, unlike the dozens I have received from lawyers, widows, and orphans of Nigerian diplomats who have 26 million dollars that are willing to share with me if I would only give them my bank account number to receive the transferred funds, this one was different.

The message continued “I found a 1971 Lee ring two years ago while digging around up at Monte Sano playground with my kids.” A full description of the ring was included in the message along with the story of how the finder had tried for two years to find the owner. It was concluded with “Thanks in advance for any assistance!”

I don’t know if I was more shocked at the request being directed at me, or at the fact that in these troubled times, someone was honest enough and concerned enough to try to find the owner of a 33-year-old ring rather than selling it at a yard sale or pawn shop.

I was excited about the challenge of the request. This season I have thoroughly enjoyed a new TV show named “Cold Case.” Each week we watch the main characters of the show as they are presented with a mystery to solve about crimes that had gone unsolved for so long they were declared cold case files. To help someone find the owner of a ring that was lost so many years ago presented me with my very own cold case to work.

This mystery actually started back in 1970, with a 17-year-old Lee High senior enjoying an afternoon with some of her friends. She was up on the mountain the fall after she had received her ring and before her graduation. She and a bunch of friends were scooping up leaves and throwing them at each other, chasing each other, and having a good time. When the activity was over, she looked down and her new ring was gone. She recruited the group to help her search for it, but it was in vain. She went back for the next couple of days looking, but finally realized that she would never see her ring again. It was lost.

Thirty-four years later, the e-mail from Anna Raebel arrives in my inbox. She recalls this about finding the ring:

"A friend and I had taken our kids up to Monte Sano to the Jazz fest the summer before last. Of course the little ones were more interested with playing on the playground than the music, so we let the older ones take them over to play. About halfway through the concert, one of the concertgoers collapsed in the front row of the amphitheatre. Doctors and nurses came out of the crowd to work on resuscitating this poor lady. While everyone waited for the ambulance, I went to check on the kids. The ambulance arrived, and my youngest and I followed its progress back around the playground to the amphitheatre, where I had left my friend. By now, the paramedics had joined the group gathered in the front row, who were performing CPR and rescue breathing.

To distract my son, I started picking around in the dirt on the backside of the theatre hill. As we were playing, something glittery caught my eye. When I picked it up, it was caked with mud. I could not tell what it was until a chunk of mud fell from the center. I looked around, but no one was nearby. As far as I could tell, the ring seemed to have been there for some time. As soon as we got home that afternoon, I started to search using the internet’s help. I never got too far, though. We’ve moved twice since then; each time, I made sure the ring made it to my desk, where it would remind me to keep trying. Whenever I had some spare time, I would surf the net, looking for information that might lead me to the ring’s owner. That’s how I eventually found your site…And here we are!

I’m not a native Huntsvillian – We moved here 10 years ago courtesy of the Army, but liked it enough to stay… Most of the folks we know are transplants like ourselves, or graduates of the other local High schools. I am really happy that I found your website, and that you have been so helpful. I have faith that if the right people get networking, eventually someone will get word to the right person about the ring."

Over a two day period I sent out about two dozen e-mails to classmates either known personally by me or from the list for Lee High School class of 1971 at the Classmates.com website .

I also ran an article about the ring in our weekly 64-65-66 Lee Alumni web site's newspaper. I reported the find and asked for assistance from anyone in finding the owner. We had a few suggestions the first week of our search, but no positive identification.

I sent one e-mail to Janice Titsworth Barnett, an alumni from LHS Class of '66, who still works at the Lee library. She checked the yearbooks in the library and found no match for "SNS", but five girls who were seniors in 1971 who had first names and last names beginning with "S". She forwarded the request to a friend who works in the Huntsville City School system who checked on the permanent records of those five. One,

Susan Sanders, was listed as no-middle-name. Her friend called the phone number that was listed in 1971 and there was still a Sanders living there (her brother Fred now lives in the family home). Suzanne's sister-in-law (Fred's wife Lynn) took the call and checked with Fred's and Suzanne's mom. She called Suzanne in Virginia and confirmed that it was her ring. Last week Lynn and Suzanne's and Fred's mom went over to Anna's house and retrieved the ring.

One funny sidebar came from trying to figure out the initials in the ring. The initials inside the ring were “SNS”. Checking the 1971 seniors in the Lee High Yearbook, no female graduate was found with those initials. Suzanne now laughs about how those three letters ended up engraved in her ring. “I didn’t have a middle name,” She explains. “I was only Suzanne Sanders.” On the order form, I was instructed to write NMN which stood for ‘No Middle Name.” Whoever processed the order at the factory and prepared the engraving must not have understood the meaning, for when I took it out of the box and examined it, there were the initials ‘SNS’ engraved inside the band.

I contacted the Huntsville Time's and suggested that this story would be interesting reading for many folks. A feature writer, Patricia Stumb, replied to my inquiry and is now doing an article for the Times. It should be published on Saturday, March 12th. You can read the rest of the story there.

My last e-mail from Anna stated the following:

"Ms. Stumb called yesterday, and I gave her my side of the story. I hope she does you and the Lee Alumni justice, as you guys are the real heroes of this story in my book!

P.S. I love your website - wish someone would do the same for my old alma mater...."

- Anna

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