West Jersey Detecting
Gold Member
Posted on Sun, Mar. 14, 2010
Beneath Shore sand, a long-lost ring, memory
By Jacqueline L. Urgo
[Philadelphia] Inquirer Staff Writer
SEA ISLE CITY, N.J. - Nearly three decades ago, Bill Keller lost one of his most prized possessions: his blue-zircon-and-14-karat-gold Naval Academy ring.
Keller, who grew up in Chester, Delaware County, thought the Class of 1970 ring had been lost to the ages, buried beneath the sand in this Cape May County resort. It had fallen from the pocket of his wife's swimsuit cover-up in the summer of 1981 as the Kellers and some friends walked on the beach near 58th Street.
But on Feb. 28, while treasure-hunting with a metal detector, Mabel Cowan of Tuckahoe came across the ring under about six inches of dry sand along the 77th Street beach.
When it was placed in his hands yesterday, Keller noticed that the ring - with its Naval Academy crest and deep-azure gemstone, the color of the sea - was still gleaming.
It looked as shiny as it did 40 years ago when Keller, a midshipman who would go on to serve in the Vietnam War, placed it on his finger during the traditional ring ceremony at Annapolis. And it still fit.
It was found in such good shape, so close to the surface, that Cowan, 56, thought someone must have lost it recently.
With the help of her nephews and the Internet, she tracked down Keller through a Naval Academy alumni association.
His name is engraved inside the ring, still clearly visible.
Stewart Farrell, a professor of marine geology and director of the Coastal Research Center at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, said he was intrigued but not surprised by the find, despite years of erosion and beach-replenishment projects along that stretch of Sea Isle City.
"Since sand usually acts as an abrasive and it wasn't badly abraded, that is interesting and could mean that it hadn't moved around much in all those years," said Farrell, who has collected various objects from New Jersey's beaches over the years, including bricks from 19th-century Atlantic City hotel foundations.
Their corners have been so rounded by years of "rolling back and forth in the slosh" at the water's edge that the bricks now look like hot dogs.
But then there are the stories about other treasures that wash up looking as they did the day they were minted, such as the authenticated George III English sovereign - a quarter-ounce gold coin - that turned up on a Strathmere beach a few weeks ago.
"There were so many shipwrecks off the Jersey Shore that certainly there is a remarkable amount of stuff out there, not to mention the bling that people lose on the beach every summer," Farrell said. "I'm really not surprised to hear about anything that washes up and is found."
But at the Tuckahoe Inn in Upper Township, where Keller had come with his wife, Bette, to retrieve his ring, surprise and awe were the order of the day.
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God," Keller said after Cowan pulled the ring from a pocket of her canvas purse and handed it to him. "You have no idea how much this means to me."
Keller, an engineering scientist who lives in Basking Ridge, said Cowan's finding the ring capped a personal odyssey that began 10 years ago when a catastrophic fall in his home ultimately caused severe memory loss.
Little by little, the memories of all the "important little things" have come back for Keller, in "odd little piece-by-piece" ways. The return of the ring - just before Keller and his wife's planned move to Maryland within the next few weeks - is what he sees as the cap on that tumultuous chapter.
"I left Maryland 40 years ago with nothing but this ring, and now I'm going back with it on my hand," said Keller, 61, holding a picture of himself and his wife in formal dress at the Naval Academy Ring Dance in 1969.
"This past decade for me has been years of piecing memories back together. This picture is back when we were young, and this ring is a symbol of things in the past that really mattered that have somehow come back to me," said Keller, the father of two grown children.
Cowan, who said using a metal detector to hunt treasure on the area's beaches had become one of her favorite pastimes during the last three years, has found numerous items, which she said she always tried to return to their owners.
Most of the time, just bottle caps and coins make her metal detector beep.
But Cowan seems to have developed a talent for finding lost rings in the last year - five in Sea Isle, including Keller's.
"It's such a great feeling to be able to return this to him, something that means so much," Cowan said. "Whenever I find something of value, I think about the poor person that lost it who must be sick to their stomach, heartbroken over it."
Beneath Shore sand, a long-lost ring, memory
By Jacqueline L. Urgo
[Philadelphia] Inquirer Staff Writer
SEA ISLE CITY, N.J. - Nearly three decades ago, Bill Keller lost one of his most prized possessions: his blue-zircon-and-14-karat-gold Naval Academy ring.
Keller, who grew up in Chester, Delaware County, thought the Class of 1970 ring had been lost to the ages, buried beneath the sand in this Cape May County resort. It had fallen from the pocket of his wife's swimsuit cover-up in the summer of 1981 as the Kellers and some friends walked on the beach near 58th Street.
But on Feb. 28, while treasure-hunting with a metal detector, Mabel Cowan of Tuckahoe came across the ring under about six inches of dry sand along the 77th Street beach.
When it was placed in his hands yesterday, Keller noticed that the ring - with its Naval Academy crest and deep-azure gemstone, the color of the sea - was still gleaming.
It looked as shiny as it did 40 years ago when Keller, a midshipman who would go on to serve in the Vietnam War, placed it on his finger during the traditional ring ceremony at Annapolis. And it still fit.
It was found in such good shape, so close to the surface, that Cowan, 56, thought someone must have lost it recently.
With the help of her nephews and the Internet, she tracked down Keller through a Naval Academy alumni association.
His name is engraved inside the ring, still clearly visible.
Stewart Farrell, a professor of marine geology and director of the Coastal Research Center at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, said he was intrigued but not surprised by the find, despite years of erosion and beach-replenishment projects along that stretch of Sea Isle City.
"Since sand usually acts as an abrasive and it wasn't badly abraded, that is interesting and could mean that it hadn't moved around much in all those years," said Farrell, who has collected various objects from New Jersey's beaches over the years, including bricks from 19th-century Atlantic City hotel foundations.
Their corners have been so rounded by years of "rolling back and forth in the slosh" at the water's edge that the bricks now look like hot dogs.
But then there are the stories about other treasures that wash up looking as they did the day they were minted, such as the authenticated George III English sovereign - a quarter-ounce gold coin - that turned up on a Strathmere beach a few weeks ago.
"There were so many shipwrecks off the Jersey Shore that certainly there is a remarkable amount of stuff out there, not to mention the bling that people lose on the beach every summer," Farrell said. "I'm really not surprised to hear about anything that washes up and is found."
But at the Tuckahoe Inn in Upper Township, where Keller had come with his wife, Bette, to retrieve his ring, surprise and awe were the order of the day.
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God," Keller said after Cowan pulled the ring from a pocket of her canvas purse and handed it to him. "You have no idea how much this means to me."
Keller, an engineering scientist who lives in Basking Ridge, said Cowan's finding the ring capped a personal odyssey that began 10 years ago when a catastrophic fall in his home ultimately caused severe memory loss.
Little by little, the memories of all the "important little things" have come back for Keller, in "odd little piece-by-piece" ways. The return of the ring - just before Keller and his wife's planned move to Maryland within the next few weeks - is what he sees as the cap on that tumultuous chapter.
"I left Maryland 40 years ago with nothing but this ring, and now I'm going back with it on my hand," said Keller, 61, holding a picture of himself and his wife in formal dress at the Naval Academy Ring Dance in 1969.
"This past decade for me has been years of piecing memories back together. This picture is back when we were young, and this ring is a symbol of things in the past that really mattered that have somehow come back to me," said Keller, the father of two grown children.
Cowan, who said using a metal detector to hunt treasure on the area's beaches had become one of her favorite pastimes during the last three years, has found numerous items, which she said she always tried to return to their owners.
Most of the time, just bottle caps and coins make her metal detector beep.
But Cowan seems to have developed a talent for finding lost rings in the last year - five in Sea Isle, including Keller's.
"It's such a great feeling to be able to return this to him, something that means so much," Cowan said. "Whenever I find something of value, I think about the poor person that lost it who must be sick to their stomach, heartbroken over it."
