Ring True
By: Tony Rehagen (Illustrations by Katie McBride) | Categories: Alumni Achievements
The ring had been found in the men’s bathroom about 42 years ago. It was a patinaed gold with a grayish blue gemstone ringed with these words: Georgia Institute of Technology. The year on the side was 1975; the initials inscribed on the inside were RTB. In her spare time at work, Wedereit would periodically pick the ring out of the box to examine it and wonder how it came more than 800 miles from Atlanta to Fredonia (population: ~2,200), how it was lost, whom it belonged to, and why no one had claimed it in more than four decades.
Then in the summer of 2023, Wedereit began to feel a sudden onset of urgency. “I felt something drawing me to that ring,” she says. “It was really strong the last time I picked it up. Something told me I had to find this person.”
Wedereit turned to a Facebook page for lost class rings and posted a picture and description of the ring. Within minutes, researchers Ben Daniel and Kim Koop had scoured online yearbooks to track down the owner, Richard T. Bray, ME 75, only to discover he had died in 2017. They also found Bray’s daughter and her contact info—but that wasn’t the end of the quest.
“She was skeptical,” says Wedereit. “People think it’s bogus or a scam. They don’t want to give out too much information over the phone. I don’t think she even knew about the ring.”
Wedereit was politely persistent, eventually convincing the family to accept her gesture. Bray’s son said that his father used to work for the Miller Brewing Company in Milwaukee, perhaps explaining how the ring made its way to Fredonia, just 30 miles north. Wedereit took the ring to a local jeweler to get it cleaned up, bought a box, and sent it to the grateful family.
Their gratitude wasn’t Wedereit’s only reward. She also got the satisfaction of fulfilling what had become something of a spiritual quest. “When I held it that last time, I had the strongest feeling I had to find its owner.”
