Lucky that Lake Gilman in Elk Township drains each year and that Sue Beck has been on the scene scouring the area with her metal detector for the last 20 years. She found Brook’s ring – and numerous others over the years – 10 inches below the beach and took it upon herself to call Rutgers–Camden. “My whole goal is to return what I’ve found, if I can, and just make somebody’s day,” says Beck, who has loved finding lost things, especially rings, since her own mother lost a class ring when Beck was a child.
It was equally fortuitous that Brook engraved his initials, “WRB,” in the silver-plated ring, for he was the only one by that name in the class of 1978. That’s how Diana Byrd of the Rutgers–Camden alumni relations office found him.
“I searched in our database, entered his initials and only one person came up,” says Byrd who first contacted Brook with a letter. She didn’t get a response, but Beck kept calling looking to unite another person with a lost object. “Sue was just so sweet, that I had to keep trying. I next sent Ron an email and after a while he wrote back saying it couldn’t possibly be his ring because his was lost in lake.”
After a long email exchange, which Brook now displays in his curio cabinet along with a map of where the ring was found, it was determined that the ring with the light-blue starburst stone was indeed his . “I knew I was swimming in a lake when I lost it, but I couldn’t have told you who I was swimming with, it was just so long ago,” says Brook.
In March, when the lake was dredged, Brook met Beck, who wouldn’t accept any payment for her good deed. She showed him where she found the ring and the two realized they both knew the family whose beach had nestled the treasure for so long. While the class ring still fits on his left hand only, Brook would rather wear his wedding ring and display the recovered class ring in his curio. “It’s just amazing that after all these years the ring is still in such good shape,” adds the marketing major, whose wife and daughter are both Rutgers grads. “I guess it’s what it’s made of… I’m just so overwhelmed to have it back.”
Media Contact: Cathy K. Donovan
(856) 225-6627
E-mail: catkarm@camden.rutgers.edu