Law School Ring Returned to Retired JAG Officer 52 Years After He Lost It

Retired JAG officer Lloyd Kenyon Rector lost his class ring from Wake Forest University law school 52 years ago, when he left it in a restroom at a Newfoundland airport.

Rector has the ring back today, thanks to a Canadian woman who found it in an old tackle box that had been left to her husband by an uncle, an airport security guard, according to NBCChicago.com and a Wake Forest news release. The woman, Mary Bartlett, called the law school, which managed to track down Rector based on clues engraved on the ring, including the owner’s initials—LKR.

Rector had become a brigadier general in the Army and the assistant Judge Advocate General for Military Law at the Pentagon. Later, he went to work at the law school as the director of continuing legal education until his retirement in 1992.

He says he was shocked when the school registrar called to see if he was the owner.

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

Rector, who lost his wife of 52 years in April, plans to pass the ring on to his sons and grandchildren.