A week or so ago, John Davila was raking leaves in his Sunset Avenue yard when he came upon something that definitely didn’t fall from a tree. It was a woman’s ring from the Verona High School class of 1978. But it didn’t belong to Davila’s wife Erica, who was born in 1978.
Erica Davila contacted the Verona High School Alumni Association. Using the initials M E C engraved inside, the VHSAA traced the ring to Mary E. Corcoran. She told the VHSAA that, shortly after getting the ring, she was cutting through a backyard with some friends when they heard a loud, angry dog barking at them. In her haste to get away, the ring went one way and she the other.
The ring and owner were re-united recently at the Davila’s home. Corcoran shared her memories of losing the ring and told a surprising story: Her mom had had a similar experience finding a lost school ring when she was a teenager. But she was stymied in her effort to return the ring because the school did not have an alumni association.
To Gail McMickle Sferrazza, the VHSAA’s historian, the episode is a testament to the small-town power of Verona. “Everyone knows everyone,” she wrote us, “or at least knows someone who knows someone who knows…you get the idea; to guide them to the proper channels for an answer on almost anything! ”
