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Old 06-16-2003, 07:16 AM
thedrifter thedrifter is offline
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Cool Retired Marine regains class ring lost in WWII

Article ran : 06/16/2003
Retired Marine regains class ring lost in WWII
By CYNDI BROWN
DAILY NEWS STAFF

The caller had a simple question: "Mr. Walters did you lose a ring?"

"No," Roy Walters answered, hesitating a moment before considering his Furman University class ring. Nah, he thought. Couldn't be. After all Walters, of Sneads Ferry, had last seen that ring more than 60 years ago, not to mention a half a world away.

At the time Walters, now 84, was a second lieutenant with 1st Marine Division during World War II. In August of 1942, he was leading the 52 men of 3rd Platoon, B Company, 1st Pioneer Battalion, in the Battle of Guadalcanal.

In the early stages of the campaign, it became apparent to company commander Capt. Walter Stephens that Walters and his men would benefit from a bath. Stephens ordered Walters to get two trucks and take the platoon to the nearby Lunga River to bathe.

"We'd been there two weeks and hadn't even taken our shoes off," Walters recalled.

But for Walters the respite came at a price - his class ring.

Walters was back in the jungle a few hours later when he noticed it was missing.

"I immediately thought I lost that ring taking that bath," he said.

He went back to the river to look for the keepsake marking four years at Furman in Greenville, S.C., where he majored in biology and played on the football team. The Lunga River waters, shallow enough for his platoon to drive the trucks right into the middle, were beautiful and clear. Walters thought it would be easy to search.

Instead, he found the riverbed layered with smooth, shiny pebbles of all shapes and sizes. Walters knew he wouldn't find the ring among the rocks.

"If there had been 10 rings laying there," he said, "you never would have found them."

When the 1st Marine Division left Guadalcanal at the end of the year, Walters left with them.

The unit went on to the peaceful island of Espiritu Santo, then to Australia, arriving in January 1943. A month later, in Melbourne, Walters met Elaine, an Australian he married July 10, 1943.

When the war ended, he returned home to Monroe with his new bride but not his Furman ring.

"Of course I told Elaine about losing my ring," Walters said, noting how much it meant to the cotton broker's son to be the first in his family to complete college.

After a couple years of marriage, Walters came home one evening to find a salad Elaine had made for dinner using shrimp and one very special ingredient.

"In the middle was my Furman class ring," Walters said, marveling at the lengths Elaine went through to get a replacement in Monroe, which about 130 miles from his alma mater.

The Walters made a life in Monroe, raising two daughters and a son while Walters served 29 years as an active-duty Marine and in the Marine Corps reserves.

Walters and his wife moved to Sneads Ferry six years ago so the retired lieutenant colonel could be closer to a military hospital.

Still, every once in a while, says Walters, he thought about the missing ring.

Then he got the call in late February.

"Mr. Walters," the caller asked, "did you lose a ring?

"That's when I'm thinking this is a come on; it's a sham. Then it wasn't long 'til I got this thing here," he said, showing off the ring he originally received in June of 1941 next to the one Elaine replaced a few years later. "I was pleasantly surprised.

"I couldn't believe it, even after the girl from Furman called me," he said. "Then, by gosh, here it came."

The rings are nearly identical. Both are gold and set with a garnet stone, Walters' birthstone. And both are engraved with the year of his graduation and a small hornet, the school's mascot at the time.

Ironically, the older ring looks newer, the engravings clearer. The one Elaine replaced has been worn smooth near the stone.

"This ring's about new 'cause I wore it very little," Walters said of the original, which is also inscribed "Roy L. Walters" on the inner band. "It's great to get it back. I couldn't believe it." But, he adds, "It's a mystery to me how it got to Maine."

A mystery that Carol Ann Parker, the woman who returned the ring, can solve.

As the U.S. port city closest to Europe, Portland, Maine, was considered the United States' most important harbor during World War II, serving as the home port for all the destroyers on the Atlantic coast.

Parker's dad ran a large dry-cleaning firm in nearby Auburn during that time, and he soon found himself cleaning military uniforms - a lot of military uniforms.

"He got sort of conscripted by the Army/Navy to do the cleaning," said Parker, who lives in Sebasco Estates, Maine.

Before cleaning the uniforms, she explained, he would go through the pockets to make sure there were no pens or pencils in them, which could ruin the laundry. But he had no way to track down the rightful owners of the more personal items he would come across, since the uniforms were sent by the military in large loads and tracked only by number. So the items went into boxes in the hopes someone would come to claim them.

But nobody ever did.

"When the business closed," said Parker, "I just think it went into some personal effects."

Those effects remained in the family for the past 40 years, until Parker decided to go through the old boxes, where she found Walters' ring.

"There it was just sitting in this little box," she said.

Parker then contacted Furman University, where she was put in touch with the alumni association's Darlene Kleckley, who tracked down Walters.

"It was so incredible," she said. "I was so surprised. To think, he was even still alive."

Walters acknowledged that he most likely took the ring off and put it in his pocket before bathing. But, he says, "I just always figured soapy hands, it washed right off."

Since the ring's return, Parker and the Walters have spoken on the phone and corresponded through letters and e-mail.

"He was astounded. I don't think he'd been in New England, let alone Maine," Parker said of Walters, who sent her a copy of the book "Marine Pioneers: The Unsung Heroes of World War II" by retired Lt. Col Kerry Lane. The book includes, on page 88, the story of Walters losing the ring in the Lunga River and Elaine replacing it. "He was so grateful. He kept saying, 'You don't know what that meant to me.' It was very touching."

For Parker, the ring's return was meaningful as well. Parker is adopted, and her birth father was in the Navy around the same time. While she has met her birth mother, she never met her dad. In a way, Parker said, it felt like a link to the man she'll never know.

"The small connections in this world are really incredible," she said, adding that she will try to visit Walters and his wife.

However, that wish is bittersweet.

Elaine had a stroke in early May and has been in the hospital ever since. Walters' daughter Sara, who is staying with her dad to help, drives him to the rehabilitation center near Hampstead every day so he can visit with his wife of nearly 60 years.

Walters doesn't wear his Furman University rings any more - neither the original nor the one he calls "Elaine's ring," the one he says means even more to him.

"I wore the ring Elaine gave me for many months and many years," he says. But with age and illness, the grandfather of 13 - including a set of triplets who he eagerly shows off in photos - has lost too much weight, and his finger swims in the ring.

He's afraid of losing it.




John Althouse/Daily News
Ring returned: The newer looking ring on the left is the one that Roy Walters lost during World War II while serving as a Marine. The one on the right is a replacement given to him by his wife. The older ring looks newer because it spent decades as unclaimed property at a laundry storage facility.


Sempers,

Roger
__________________
IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY HUSBAND
SSgt. Roger A.
One Proud Marine
1961-1977
68/69
Once A Marine............Always A Marine.............

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