ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 20, 1996 TAG: 9606200057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
WAS IT REMORSE, or a matter or righting somebody else's decades-old wrong? The answer will probably remain a mystery. All Roanoke City Councilman Jack Parrott knows is he's got his college class ring back.
It was a bad day in the bachelor officers' quarters for Jack Parrott.
The year was 1951. The recent Virginia Military Institute graduate was headed for war in Korea. He had flown across the country and spent a couple of weeks in San Francisco waiting to ship out.
One day in a barracks locker room, Parrott laid his VMI class ring on a sink and ducked into the shower. When he emerged, the ring was gone.
Like every other cadet who makes it through the grueling four years at the military college, Parrott worked for that class of 1950 ring. He endured months as a freshman "rat" - hours of standing at attention, marching in full uniform; merciless taunts by upperclassmen and push-ups in the middle of the night. Not to mention tough academics.
Class rings are handed out during an annual "Ring Figure" dance, a VMI tradition. One by one, each cadet's sweetheart slips the rings onto the fingers of proud juniors as they stand together beneath a large arch.
"You get a little smooch and they put the ring on your finger,'" Parrott recalls.
So the ring he'd toiled so hard for was gone. Parrott filed a claim, and the Army bought him a new one. But it never carried quite the same sentimental value as the original.
In the decades since, Parrott had wondered every now and then what happened to the ring.
Was it pawned for a few dollars that bought drinks in a Fishermen's Wharf dive? Did somebody use it as a chip in a poker game? Was it melted down for its precious gold? Was its tourmaline gemstone now the gleaming green centerpiece of someone's sweetheart ring?
Parrot was sure those questions would never be answered.
"It's so easily identifiable," he says. "I kind of figured the thing had been taken and melted down, to tell you the truth."
On Tuesday, he got some answers.
No, the the ring's gold didn't end up as a filling in somebody's mouth. And no, the green gem isn't part of an earring, hanging heaven knows where.
On Monday, VMI quartermaster Capt. Jerry Ruley received a small box in the mail, addressed simply to "VMI, Lexington, Va." The postmark said Carmel, Ind., a town of 18,000 people about 10 miles north of Indianapolis.
Inside was a VMI class of 1950 ring. With it was an unsigned note, neatly printed on paper from a scratch pad bearing the logo of the Outrigger Hotels in Hawaii.
"Would you please try to return this ring to its owner," the writer penned. "It came into my possession during the Korean War. Thank you."
In place of a return address on the box were two initials: "D.W."
Ruley and an aide were able to make out the name engraved on the inside of the ring: John Harris Parrott II, Roanoke, Virginia. After checking the VMI alumni directory, Ruley called Parrott and mailed him the ring.
The ring arrived Tuesday, but it doesn't fit. Parrott has arthritis and can't work it over his knuckle. So he's getting it resized.
Meanwhile, he's been been doing more wondering.
Why did someone feel the need to return it now, 45 years later? Was it a final act of contrition by somebody on his death bed?
More questions to which he'll probably never get the answers.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff. Roanoke City Councilman Jack Parrottby CNBshows off the 1950 class ring, mysterously returned. color.