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Buried treasure returned to owner’s finger
By Jillian Lazzaro
Wed Aug 15, 2007, 01:05 PM EDT
After Michael Slaynor discovered a woman's 1961 North Attleboro High School class ring hidden in the dirt, he figured it would be easy to find the owners of the buried treasure.
But it wasn't, and Slaynor ended up cycling through 60's era newspaper articles searching for a graduate with the initials M.J.S. With the help of Richards Memorial Library staff, he searched the pages of NAHS yearbooks. He contacted the president of the 1961 yearbook, and after getting the names of three women with the initials, he started making calls.
And that's how he discovered Marsha Jean Sutherland, now Mrs. Marsha Jean Thimot of Attleboro.
As Thimot explained, the class ring had been preserved perfectly in the ground at Locust Valley Golf Course for 46 years. "In those days, when you went steady with someone, you exchanged rings. Well the guy I was going steady with lost mine."
She was either a Junior or Senior at North Attleboro High School, and her steady boyfriend had lost it during a golf trip in the summer of '60 or '61.
"I remember being worried," said Thimot. "I didn't want to tell my parents about losing the ring they had bought me."
In the end, after Thimot and her steady boyfriend broke up, in the fashion typical of the time, she returned his class ring to him. The boy, having lost her class ring, had nothing to return to her.
It took 46 years for Thimot's class ring to be finally returned to her, and by a stranger. Slaynor discovered it a month ago, along the path where a walkway was to be laid in Locust Valley, the same golf course that Thimot's husband now frequents.
"It must have been stepped on by so many people. I can only imagine that her husband must have stepped on it a number of times," said Slaynor.
Despite the ring's precarious situation, burial only preserved its condition.
"This is what it looked like when I got it," said Thimot. "It probably looks better than something that was worn for 40 years. Really. It looks beautiful."
