SHS class ring returned to ’83 graduate

In 1985, Lynn Briggs lost her Smithfield High School class ring.

She’d taken it off while doing laundry while attending college at Virginia Tech, then returned an hour later to find it missing.

Nearly thirty-seven years later, on Jan. 4, she received a message on Facebook that stopped her in her tracks.

“I’m trying to find someone who graduated from Smithfield High School in 1983 with the initials MLB,” the message read. “I have something of hers and I want to return it.”

Briggs, now director of community and media relations for Isle of Wight County Schools, had been monitoring the school system’s Facebook page when she cautiously replied.

Her initials had been MLB — M. Lynn Barlow — when she graduated SHS in 1983. She’d never gone by her first name and dropped it altogether when she’d married.

“After passing along my number, she called me and uttered words I never thought I would hear,” Briggs said. “’I have your high school class ring.’”

The woman who found it, Easter Thompson, lives in Northern Virginia and, according to Briggs, couldn’t remember how it came into her possession. The Smithfield Times attempted to contact Thompson twice by phone but was unable to reach her.

“What are the odds that she posted a message to the division’s Facebook page that I monitor?” Briggs asked rhetorically. “I just can’t believe it.”

Briggs received her long-lost class ring by mail on Jan. 18.

“It still fits,” she said.