A class ring that was misplaced by a Long Island couple on their honeymoon in Massachusetts has been returned to them nearly a half-century later.
The ring had been sitting at a beach in Cape Cod since Patrick and Christine O’Hagan spent their honeymoon there 47 years ago.
Patrick lost his new Manhattan College ring while swimming. “I felt it slip off my hand,” he said.
The ring had been a gift from his wife, who remembered it over the years.
“I always looked for it,” Christine said. “It was like a piece of our early years that was missing.”
That’s when treasure hunter Jim Wirth, of California, made a find while visiting Cape Cod this summer. As he swept a beach with his metal detector, he came across an old ring.
“It had a full name inside,” Wirth said. “Patrick O’Hagan.”
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Using a bit of detective work, Wirth came upon “The Book of Kehls,” a 2005 memoir written by Christine about the deaths of her son and nephews from Muscular Dystrophy.
“It was chapter nine, and it began: ‘I fell in love with Patrick O’Hagan,’” Wirth said. “So I knew that I had the exact person I needed to track down.”
What followed was a phone call decades in the making.
“Oh my God, that’s what I said to him. Oh my God, you’re kidding,” Christine said.
Wirth cleaned away decades of age, revealing the shiny ring that Patrick wore when he was a newlywed. The ring was returned to the O’Hagans a few days later.
“For a family that’s been through such a struggle, to bring some little, you know, ray of sunshine to them is pretty special,” Wirth said.
The O’Hagans said Wirth’s kindness reminded them of the love that has sustained them through some very dark days.
“If you wrote a book like this and put it in it, nobody would believe it,” Patrick said.
