A Texas man is reunited with the class ring he lost 56 years ago

""I was leaning over the railing," DiStefano said, "and the ring just slipped off my finger, and I watched it go down into the darkness. And I said, 'Well, that's gone. I'm never going to get that back.'""

""I was about up to my knees at low tide and got a really strong hit on the metal detector," Orlowski said. "I dug quite a few times, pretty deep, and finally pulled it up. And I was like, 'Wow, look at that thing!' Not realizing what it was.""

""I said to my wife, 'What should I do with this?'" he said. "And she says, 'Well, if you lost your ring, you would want it back, right?'""

""He said, 'I found a ring belonging to somebody in your class,'" Morris said. "So I posted a message on our Facebook page and I asked if anybody was in touch with Al DiStefano.""

Al DiStefano lost a Fordham University class ring with a red garnet by leaning over a Long Island dock in May 1969, watching it slip from his finger into the water. The ring remained underwater for fifty-six years until electrician David Orlowski detected and dug it up at low tide on Cedar Beach in Mt. Sinai, New York. Orlowski considered selling the palladium ring as scrap but his wife urged him to try to return it. Engraved details enabled a search that connected to a classmate, a Facebook post located DiStefano, and the ring was mailed back to him in Arlington, Texas, where he reacted with astonishment.

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