Feb. 14 (UPI) — A Maine woman who lost her then-boyfriend’s class ring in 1973 was reunited with the precious item after it was found buried in a park in Finland.
Debra McKenna, 63, said her then-boyfriend, Shawn, gave her the Morse High School ring before he headed to college in 1973 and she accidentally left it in a bathroom at the Porteous, Mitchell & Braun Co. department store in Portland only a few months later.
McKenna and Shawn married in 1977 and remained together until he died in 2017 after a long fight with cancer.
The woman said the ring was long forgotten when the Morse High School Alumni Association received a message from Marko Saarinen, who explained he had found the ring buried under 8 inches of dirt while he was using his metal detector in a forested park in Kaarina, Finland.
The ring bore the name of the school and the initials “S.M.,” which the alumni association determined could only have been Shawn McKenna.
“There was a lot of weeping when I learned that someone found it and made the effort to reach out and find me,” McKenna told the Bangor Daily News.
Saarinen put the ring in the mail and McKenna received it this week.
McKenna said she does not know how the ring ended up in Finland. She said her husband spent some time in the country, but it was 20 years after the ring was lost.
“Shawn used to say there’s no such thing as coincidences,” McKenna said.
