Chandler Smith’s 1969 class ring found after 40 years

Original Source – Campbellsvillian Spring 2014 – Pages 4-5

 

Imagine you have just graduated from college. You worked long and hard and finally have something to show for it: a class ring. You wear it only for a few weeks before suddenly losing it. You look everywhere imaginable, but it’s nowhere to be found. This is what happened to Chandler Smith, until it was found 42 years later by a treasure hunter.

Smith graduated from Campbellsville College in 1969, but was drafted into the Army before going to commencement.

“I came out of the Army in May 1971,” Smith said. “I weighed 130 pounds, so the ring didn’t fit.”

He reconnected with a group of friends and together they played softball and tennis at Miller Park in Campbellsville. One day, on his way home from the park, he noticed the ring was missing.

“I got home that day, and I looked around. I looked in my pockets, the car – I really thought I lost it walking the dog. I was on North Shore Drive on my hands and knees looking for it.

“It’s shiny. I thought, ‘Someone will see it.’”

The ring was important to Smith. “I worked long and hard to get through school and to graduate. The ring was important – that’s why I had the ‘S’ put on it – my dad always signed his name with a fancy ‘S’ and I started to sign my name like that. That’s why I had it inscribed.”

Smith’s family has a lot of history with CU. His great-grandfather, Henry C. Wood, was instrumental in creating Russell Creek Academy (now CU). His grandmother, Tommie Wood, was a co-sponsor, dean of women and librarian at the college, while his grandfather delivered milk there every day. His father, G. Dennis Smith, a CU alumnus, served as treasurer of the CU Alumni Association for more than 30 years; and his mother, Margaret, was a secretary to the president.

Smith thought he’d never see the ring again. That changed in September 2013 when a man named Howard Ratcliff came to Campbellsville.

Ratcliff is a treasure hunter. He spent 20 years in the military, worked at The Boeing Company as a financial analyst and is now retired and a full-time RVer. He came to Campbellsville as a seasonal worker for Amazon. During his stay in 2012, he found an old belt buckle at Tebb’s Bend.

“You can speculate on who and where something has been – finding and saving little bits of history,” he said.

Last year he found something else.

He started out near the playground in Miller Park and eventually moved on to the picnic area near Trace Creek, throwing away any trash he found during his hunt. He re-zeroed out his machine, sweeping back and forth. He picked up multiple signals and started digging.

Cutting a plug in the ground, he ran a coil under it and pushed dirt up. He pulled up two dozen pull tabs before seeing something.

“I saw a sliver of gold in the dirt at the bottom of the hole. ‘No. It can’t be. It’s shiny,’” he said.

If Ratcliff had angled the tool, he could have gauged the object. Instead, he went straight down.

He examined what appeared to be a gold ring. “Oh wow, look what we have here,” he said, and soon took it to Paula Smith, director of alumni relations at CU. Smith’s reaction was normal when Ratcliff asked her to find out the owner.

“There’s no way. I wouldn’t have a clue where to start,” she said.

Ratcliff said the name was inscribed inside the ring: Chandler Smith.

“We will find this gentleman,” she said. “It may take a while, but we will find him.”

She took it home that night and cleaned it, noticing it had a blue stone with an “S” on top with “Campbellsville College” around the stone.

“Blue is my favorite color,” Chandler said.

For several weeks, Paula asked everyone she could if they knew Chandler Smith. She pulled a query on her computer and noticed he had graduated in 1969 alongside Ron and Mary-Lou Rafferty, good friends of hers.

“Mary-Lou was all over it,” Paula said.

She told Paula to call Jeanne Mitchell from Mitchell’s Mens Wear, who told he she knew Margaret Smith and visited her often. Margaret has two sons: Chandler and George, and Mitchell had George’s contact number.

Paula called his home and left two messages explaining the situation. A week or so later she was in Louisville, Ky., and received a call from a number in Cincinnati, Ohio, letting it go to voice mail.

The message started with, “This is Chandler Smith.”

She couldn’t wait to call him back, and soon set up a date for her, Chandler and Ratcliff to meet on Oct. 23, 2013, in Montgomery Library on CU’s campus.