Baptist preacher Don Mathis of Bowling Green graduated from then-Austin Peay State College in Clarksville, Tn., in 1966.
He would later go on to seminary school. To mark his accomplishment as the first college graduate in his family, he purchased an 18-karat gold class ring with a ruby center stone.
"When I got the ring, I asked them to inscribe my initials on the inside, which if that had not happened, he would never have found me," Mathis said.
That he is Mike DeVries of Kansas City, Mo., whose hobby is metal detecting.
"A friend invited me to a park so I went with him, and it wasn’t half an hour until I found this ring," DeVries told WKU Public Radio. "I even called him over and said. 'This is a good signal.' Sure enough, out popped that gold ring and I couldn’t hardly believe it because it was big.”
The novice sleuth went to work. DeVries posted a photo of the ring on a Facebook group for metal detecting enthusiasts.
"A lady in our group asked if there were initials inside and so I looked and there were. She told member she was a member of Ancestry.com and was able to look up old college yearbooks," DeVries said. "Of course I had the year and college, and in about ten minutes she messaged me back saying, 'I’ve got your guy.'”
After 45 years, Mathis had resigned himself to the fact he’d never see the ring again. He assumed it was at the bottom of a lake.
“Sometime in the late 70s, I was pastor of Southside Baptist Church in Princeton, Ky., in the Lake Barkley area," Mathis said. "Some of my buddies tried to teach me how to water ski. I wore it everywhere and was stupid enough to have it on my hand when I went water skiing, and so I assumed I lost it in Barkley Lake.”
You can imagine his surprise when Mathis got an email recently from man more than 500 miles away saying his ring had been found. At first he thought it was a scam.
“He simply said, 'I may have your college ring.' I simply sent him two one-word sentences. School? Year? He sent me back Austin Peay State College, 1966. The initials on the inside, DRM," recalled Mathis. "I knew it was mine. You can’t imagine how I felt.”
But Mathis was puzzled how his long-lost keepsake ended up in Missouri.
“I thought Kansas City? I’ve never been to Kansas City. Then I thought, 'yes I have.' I went there for a Southern Baptist Convention in 1977. I’m guessing this is what happened. I had my seminary ring in my jacket pocket and I thought, 'I’m going to the Southern Baptist Convention and I should at least wear my seminary ring.' So I reached in my pocket and got the seminary ring and exchanged them, and I thought I put my Austin Peay ring back in my pocket, but I probably missed my pocket.”
Honest stranger Mike DeVries mailed the ring to Mathis which he now proudly wears, often with his red Austin Peay sweatshirt. DeVries is a Louisville native and later found out his father attended seminary with Mathis.
“I don’t know him, but he’s got to be a good guy to do that," Mathis said. "It looks like I bought it yesterday, so he must have had it cleaned.”
The shiny gold ring once buried underground had a melt value of about $500, and Mathis is grateful knowing it could have been hocked.
“Mike, you’re my hero buddy, thank you. I appreciate you not taking it to the pawn shop and getting what you could get out of it," Mathis said. "You told me a voice said you should try to find the owner and you said that was the Lord, and I think that was true.”
“To be able to give somebody a ring back like that, that they had earned, especially after I found out the connection that he and my dad were in seminary together, it’s just a huge blessing to me too," DeVries said.
A discovery that took him on an unexpected journey also gained him a new friend. DeVries says he hopes to one day meet Mathis.
