It’s never too late to find something that’s been lost. That’s a lesson 73-year old Eddie Stokoe learned this week when the wedding ring he lost 52 years ago was returned to him.
bbc.com
Stokoe and his wife Jean, who live in Consett in the north of England, were childhood sweethearts who got married in October 1965. They had only been married for six months when Stokoe took the ring off to play a friendly game of cricket. After the game, he was “absolutely devastated” to find that the ring had fallen off.
“I searched everywhere for it but could not find it, and spent the next few weeks quartering the field like a barn owl, desperately looking for that ring, but with no luck,” explains Stokoe.
On many occasions, Jean offered to buy a replacement wedding ring. But since the ring and the engraving on Jean’s ring matched the missing ring, Stokoe always felt the ring was “irreplaceable.” Naturally, as the years past, he lost hope of ever recovering the ring.
But that was until a woman who was playing cricket on that same field spotted the ring after
geography.org.uk
she slipped and fell at an adjacent riverbank. After washing some mud off the ring, she was able to read the ring’s engraving.
The woman mentioned the ring to a spectator at the cricket field who turned out to be none other than Stokoe’s brother, Billy. After remembering that his brother had lost his ring once upon a time, Billy identified the ring by the engraved names and was able to get it back to his brother.
“I could not believe it was still there after all that time,” said Stokoe. “When we got it back and I showed it to Jean, she broke down in tears of joy. It has been unbelievable.”
metro.co.uk
What exactly happened to the ring over the last 52 years is a mystery. But Stokoe has vowed to never take it off again, although now the ring only fits his pinky.
“It must have been destiny that it came back,” says Stokoe. “Now that I have got it I am never taking it off and risking losing it again.”