“We all lived happily ever after.”
This was the end to a sad tale of a 1975 Carthage graduate who lost her class ring that same year.
Larry Cooper, a retired Missouri State Trooper, found the ring while enjoying his hobby of metal detecting. He said it was buried in a yard three inches down on West Central Street in Carthage. Cooper is a member of the 417 Relic Hunters based out of Springfield, and returning the ring was a mission, not an option.
“That’s the thing to do,” he said. “It’s a part of the code, if you can return something you find, you do.”
The find sent Cooper on a search, and he started with the Carthage High School. Unwilling to wait long for the name, Cooper went to the Carthage Public Library, but ran into another barrier. The recent construction on the library has the yearbooks buried in storage. However, he didn’t let that hinder his mission.
Cooper’s luck turned when he asked Marilyn Baugh, a deputy county clerk at the Jasper County Courthouse, for help. It just so happened that Mary Kyte was in the office who graduated around that time. Baugh asked Kyte to look up the initials on the ring, TAR, in her yearbook. The next day, Kyte answered with the name, Terrie Ann Ralston.
Baugh wondered if there was a relation between this Ralston and the Vonna Ralston who works in the assessor’s office in the courthouse, and it turned out that Vonna was, in fact, Terrie’s mother.
Now, 32 years later, her name is Terrie Bevington. She lives in Purcell and works at Schreiber Foods in Carthage. Through Vonna, Baugh received Terrie’s contact information and gave it to Cooper.
Finally, the day came when Cooper returned the ring to Bevington.
“She was just thrilled to death,” Cooper said.
The story goes Bevington only had the ring for only a month or two. The ring was too big, and it fell off while she was visiting a friend on Central Street. That’s exactly where Cooper found it: between the sidewalk and the road.
“I was shocked,” Bevington said. “I said ‘you gotta be kidding me,’ and it looked so good. Larry’s wife cleaned it up for me, and I was just amazed someone made the effort to find me. I was very surprised. It’s been quite the discussion topic at work.”
Metal detecting will continue to be a hobby for Cooper. He said he has found countless coins, but the class ring was the first thing of real sentimental value he has found.
“It’s a nice hobby, just like fishing or hunting, that (my son and I) can do together,” he said. “You never know when that (buzzer) is going to go off. It’s kind of intriguing.”
