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Early yesterday afternoon, August Wiedemann was stunned when he got a call from Iona Preparatory letting him know that his class ring had been located. After all, he graduated from the Catholic high school 60 years ago and hadn't seen the ring in almost that many years. "I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe it," Wiedemann said by telephone from his home in Chatham, N.Y. On Saturday, an administrator at the New Rochelle school got an e-mail from Gary Thatcher, a dental service technician who had found the ring by using a metal detector that day, and from his friend Phillip Bergman, who was with him during the discovery. Thatcher and Bergman had been hunting with metal detectors near an old swimming hole in Poughkeepsie, which was a popular swimming, fishing and picnic site through the 1970s. Thatcher had dug up about 40 old soda cans — pull tabs — before he found the gold ring from the class of 1946. It was buried about 3 or 4 inches deep at the old picnic ground, now overgrown with weeds. And so the mystery began, as Thatcher and Bergman began to search for the original owner. "You see names engraved, dates," said Thatcher, a metal detector enthusiast. "It all comes together so that you're almost like a detective trying to find the person. It's even more thrilling to try to take the extra step to try to return it." First, he had to find the ruby stone inlay that was missing from the ring. Because the inlay was encased in gold, Thatcher's metal detector was able to pick up a signal. Even with the full ring intact, only some letters of the the engraved name were legible. Thatcher scanned through a list of alumni on Iona Prep's Web site and found the name of one man who graduated in 1947. He called him, and asked him if he knew anyone with the first initial "A," whose last name started with "Wied." The former Iona Prep student looked at an old yearbook and found the closest match, August Wiedemann. Thatcher couldn't find a listing for Wiedemann, so he and Bergman contacted the school, which didn't have his information in its database. Angela Valitutto, director of alumni and annual giving, found him through an Internet search. She told him about the missing ring and about a 60th year reunion for the class of 1946 that is coming up in two weeks. "It was strange. I was so happy to actually be part of finding the owner," she said. The call brought back a wave of nostalgia for Wiedemann, who now is 77 and has fond memories of his old high school. Wiedemann said he didn't remember losing the ring. He had thought it might even be in a chest in his attic, where he stored old Iona report cards and a big gold "I," until he moved three years ago and saw it was not there. So he was elated when he got the phone call. "I appreciate it," Wiedemann said. "It brings back a lot of memories." For Thatcher and Bergman, it was a happy ending. Thatcher said there is an unwritten code among metal-detecting hobbyists to try to find the owner of lost goods if possible. "When you do find someone's property, you try your utmost to return it," Thatcher said. Bergman agreed. "It's a fun hobby to find interesting things and historical things," he said. "You find everything from Revolutionary War muskets to old coins. But to really return something to somebody and have them get enjoyment from it, it really means a lot."
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