Alumnus reunited with his law school class ring after 52 years

Lloyd K. Rector carefully removes the ring from an envelope, then opens a small plastic jewelers’ bag. The ring was presented to the Wake Forest College Bachelor of Laws Class of 1953. The initials “LKR” are engraved on the inside; the university motto, class information and the symbol for the international legal fraternity -- Phi Delta Phi – are carved on the ring’s surface.

Written on the plastic bag: “10 karats, 17.6 grams.”

A cursory glance shows the ring to be ordinary, forgettable even, except for the obvious damage. A black onyx, the centerpiece around the gold casing, is missing. As Rector pictures it in his mind, he remembers that the stone bore a small crack, the result of an accident during military basic training.

Now in place of the stone is a hole, its jagged edges worn from time yet clearly visible.

How long the stone has been missing is unknown, but the plastic bag shows the stone was probably sold, though maybe not by the person who found it in Gander, Newfoundland, on a cold December day 52 years ago.

Rector, then a soldier returning home from Germany, left the ring in an airport restroom as the plane refueled toward the end of the more than 20-hour-long journey. He placed the ring on a shelf, washed up and returned to the plane.

“I looked over at my wife and said, ‘Caroleen, I left my ring in the washroom.’”

But it was too late to return, as the Constellation had lifted off. If they find it, a flight attendant told Rector, they’ll send it to you.

“Well, that was the last I heard of it,” said Rector, who, after leaving the Army for a few years, went on to became a brigadier general and the assistant Judge Advocate General for Military Law at the Pentagon. Rector’s military career spanned more than 30 years. A native of Drexel, N.C., he retired from the Army in 1984 and, until 1992, worked at the Wake Forest law school as the director of Continuing Legal Education. He was married to Caroleen for more than 52 years. She passed away in April.

Rector, who is 80, never forgot about the ring, thinking about it, he says, “from time to time.”

“I had told the story among the family, and we all kidded about it. I wondered, ‘Whatever happened to that ring?’”

The letter, sent in July, is addressed to the registrar at Wake Forest “College.” In it, Mary Bartlett of Gander, Newfoundland, said she found the ring among items that belonged to a late relative. She described the ring in detail, including the inscriptions and the note: “The stone is missing.” She included her address and telephone number.

Bartlett’s husband, Don, had an uncle who worked security in the Gander airport. The uncle, Ralph Christian, never married. He lived in a hotel with his possessions, which included a fishing tackle box. Christian died some 20 years ago, as best Bartlett can remember. The tackle box ended up with the Bartletts, who, says Mary, “put it aside.”

“We’re starting to downsize, going through some old junk in the house, and I found the ring, along with the hooks and stuff that were in the box,” she says.

Bartlett treasures a class ring she received after graduating from nursing school, so she took an interest in returning the lost ring to its original owner or his family. “My class ring, I still wear it,” she says. “I thought maybe somebody would be glad to have it. It wasn’t a big effort.”

Bartlett eschewed the Internet, reaching for an encyclopedia, where she found Wake Forest. She visited a jeweler to ensure an accurate description of the ring. She doesn’t believe Christian removed the stone, thinking it was taken before it came into his possession. “I couldn’t see him removing the stone,” she says. “He wasn’t that type of person.”

LeAnn Steele, the registrar for the School of Law, immediately began looking for the ring’s owner.

“Based on the description there was no doubt that the ring belonged to a Wake grad,” Steele says. “I followed my hunch that the ring’s owner most definitely received an LLB,” which was replaced with the Juris Doctor beginning with the class of 1967.

Steele’s investigation led her to a copy of the 2005 Alumni Directory, where, under the heading Law School Class of 1953, she found Lloyd Kenyon Rector – ‘LKR.’ According to the directory, 26 people were part of the Class of 1953, including University Chaplain Emeritus Edgar Douglas Christman. Rector received his undergraduate degree from Wake Forest in 1952. Rector’s daughter, Carol Rector Bankhead, graduated with her bachelor’s degree in 1983 and her MBA in 1991. Her husband, Todd Bankhead, earned his MBA from Wake Forest in 1992 and her brother, Neil Rector (’80) and his wife, Susan Darnell Rector (’81), are all Demon Deacons.

Steele called Lloyd Rector, who lives near campus in Winston-Salem, to deliver the surprising news.

“I was dumbfounded,” he said. “I had no earthly idea where the ring was … I never had any earthly expectations to ever get the ring back.”

“I could tell that the ring had great sentimental value to him as he described the events which led to its loss with vivid detail, like it happened yesterday,” says Steele, who knew Rector when he worked for Wake Forest.

“This was a very unique experience for me. Having been a Wake Forest University employee for 31 years, and currently having served as Law School registrar for 22 of those years, I can say during my tenure, thus far, I have never experienced anything like this before. It was so intriguing – like a scavenger hunt – that I just had to follow it through to the end; and I am so glad to know that the ending is a happy one.”

Now, Rector’s stories about the ring will have an entirely different ending – a decidedly happy one. “The ring now means more than it did when I first got it, because of all this, and the history behind it,” says Rector, who will pass the ring on to his sons and grandchildren.

The School of Law stopped presenting class rings decades ago, but Rector said he will find a jeweler to replace the missing stone. Rector spreads his left hand and drops the ring on his finger, just as he did some 52 years ago.

“It still fits.”

It’s as if the ring never left his hand.

-- By John Trump