A United States Marine Corps ring was found at a car wash, and the owners of the facility hope to reunite the ring with the person who lost it.
“I’m sure they’re missing their ring,” Stacy Daly of Plaza Express Car Wash said on Thursday.
The silver-colored ring features a red center stone with the words “United States Marines” around the stone. One side of the ring features the words “Tun Tavern” and an image of the 18th-century Philadelphia building, which is considered the birthplace of the Marine Corps. The other side reads “Iwo Jima 1945,” with an image of the flag raising that marked the historic World War II victory.
The ring was found last weekend on the ground near the pay station where vehicles pause just before entering the car wash located in Park Avenue Plaza, Daly said. Soon after, she posted photos of the ring to Facebook with a plea to help find the owner.
Since then, she said, her post has been shared hundreds of times and reached more than 15,000 people. But the ring’s owner hasn’t been found.
The lack of success with social media and the ring’s Iwo Jima reference led Daly to think that the ring’s owner might be older, maybe even a World War II veteran. A younger owner, she reasoned, would be more likely to have encountered the post on Facebook by now.
Numerous veterans in her family supported the theory that the owner might be older, she said.
Whether that guess is right or not, she was confident the owner must want the ring back, and with many family members of her own who are veterans she wanted to do whatever she could to return it.
“They’re all going, ‘Did you find the guy? Did you find the guy?’” Daly said of her military relatives.
“I’m sure this ring has a lot of importance to him,” she added, before noting that she couldn’t be sure of the owner’s gender or even whether the person who lost the ring actually served in the Marines. “Maybe it’s a grandpa or somebody else following in his footsteps. Of course, I could be way off — it could be a woman, a grandchild. Maybe this was someone important to them.”
Sgt. Cody Cloudman of the Erie-based Truck Company, 25th Marine Regiment, agreed that the ring likely had sentimental value to its owner. In his experience, he said, such rings are not especially common, though they are available to purchase following graduation from basic training.
Given a description, Cloudman said it was typical of an older style of ring, though his guess was more recent than Daly’s suggestion of World War II.
“That almost makes me think it belongs to somebody a little older — maybe Vietnam era or later,” Cloudman said.
Similar rings are widely available for purchase online, further expanding the possible pool of owners.
The ring features no apparent inscriptions or other clues as to the owner, according to Daly, but appears to be in excellent condition.
“It looks pretty dang good,” she said.
Finding the owner may come down to a “Cinderella” moment, she agreed, with the ring taking the part of the glass slipper and a Marine replacing the princess.
“Let’s pray we find someone,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be a wonderful Memorial Day weekend if we did?”
Anyone with information about the lost ring should contact Daly at 814-336-8437.
___
© 2020 The Meadville Tribune
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
