Carolina Alumni Review - January/February 2009

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Class Ring Stories

Carolina has started a new tradition: a class ring with an official design and a special ceremony to present it to students each year. (Read more about that on page 56.) We asked alumni to share stories about their class rings. Excerpts of some of the responses are below. Read more at alumni.unc.edu/classring.

class quotes

“In 1982 while on a fishing trip on Harker’s Island, N.C., I lost my UNC class ring in 8-10 feet of water at low tide and with temperatures in the mid-40s. I finally convinced Jack McCann, the owner of Calico Jack’s Marina (where we were staying), to let me hire him to make the dive the next day. He found my ring on his second pass! I decided to retire the ring at that time. In 1991, I decided to get it out again and found that it had ‘shrunk.’ I sent it back to Balfour for resizing, and it was returned to me. I now proudly wear it often and always to UNC ballgames.”

William P. “Willie” Shoemaker ’ 60

Eden

“I was in the class of 1964, and my wife and I lived at 86 Hamilton Road in Glen Lennox. I lost my ring sometime before I graduated from graduate school in 1965 and moved away. I never could find that ring. Then several years ago, I got a call from the University. The person asked me my name and if I was in the class of ’ 64. She then gave me the name of someone in Glen Lennox who wanted to talk with me. I called them and found out the husband had a metal detector and liked to use it in the neighborhood looking for unusual items. He had been searching about 20 feet out from the front door of 86 Hamilton Road when he detected something. He dug down about 6 or 7 inches and found my ring! It was in perfect shape. We met shortly thereafter and they returned my ring, over 40 years later!”

Robert K. Hughes ’ 64

Sanford

“I never had a class ring of my own from Carolina. In the fall of 1968, I started to date the man, Nelson Drew ’ 70, I would marry three years later. Earlier that year, he and one of his best friends at Carolina had designed their class rings. From the time the ring arrived, it was one of his most prized posses-

sions. After we were married and Nelson went on active duty in the Air Force, I became the guardian of the ring. I always knew where it was put after the first hour of driving somewhere or where it was placed before we went to the beach. Nelson had some funny stories of Air Force Academy graduates asking what year he had graduated from the

SANDRA DREW ’ 71

‘Academy.’ The Carolina blue

stone and the white gold con-

Sandra Snyder Drew ’ 71 says her late husband’s class ring “goes with me

whenever I need the strength ...” Col. Nelson Drew ’ 70 died while serving on a
fused people more than once. peace-negotiation mission in Bosnia and his ring was found months later by
local boys and delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. His wife wears the
He wore it almost everywhere
ring, which lost its silver “NC” inlay, on a black ribbon.

he went. And so, on that horrible day in August 1995 when the armored onship the next semester. I was working at personnel carrier he was riding in, trying to Harrison’s restaurant that night and was make his way to Sarajevo to negotiate a cease- thrown into the crowd when I got off work. fire between the warring parties in the My ring was covered in light blue paint. It Balkans, rolled down Mount Igman, I was told took years for all the paint to come clean. Of that no personal effects had survived. One day course, I didn’t try very hard to clean it. It was in January 1996, I received a call from a good reminder of that glorious night! The Richard Holbrooke’s personal assistant. She second story has to do with graduate school. I had Nelson’s class ring. On Christmas Eve finished at UNC in 1992, working for many 1995, three Bosnian boys had brought the years before returning for my MS degree. ring to the American Embassy in Sarajevo and Friends told me I should upgrade my ring to given it to the guard. That is all I know about have the MS on it. I chose not to, as my BA the journey of the ring from the inferno on degree was as hard earned as that MS diplo-Mount Igman in August until it arrived at my ma. The 1981 ring remains on my finger with home that cold January day. Since that time it possible slight traces of baby blue.” goes with me whenever I need the strength: Lynn Hecht ’ 81 high school graduations, a wedding, funerals, Hillsborough the 10th anniversary of the signing of the

Dayton Peace Accord, the dedication of the memorial with his name at Carolina. During its journey home, his ring lost the inlaid silver

NC that was set in the stone, and it still bears the tarnish from the fire. Whenever I wear it on the ribbon around my neck, I remember our time at Carolina, Nelson’s loyalty to his family and his country, and I think about those three boys who somehow knew what the ring meant to me.”

Sandra Snyder Drew ’ 71

Herndon, Va.

“My class ring is the ladies’ classic rectangular black onyx set in gold with the UNC crest engraved in the stone. I wore it every day until I got married. One day several years ago, my daughter, Anna, was raiding my jewelry box for something to wear, and she thought the ring was ‘really cool.’ She became the new owner of that ring when she enrolled at Carolina this year.”