SEA ISLE CITY – Mysteries abound in life. Recently a Sea Isle City man and the ring he lost 41 years ago were the centerpiece of a remarkable coincidence.
Charles Dalrymple, the proprietor of Dalrymple’s Card and Gift Shoppe, learned from Rosser Goodman of Los Angeles, Calif. that she had found an Ocean City High School Class of 1973 ring inscribed with the initials “CD” in the attic of her great aunt, Oneita Parker, who lived in Vineland.
“I lost the ring on the beach in 1976,” said Dalrymple. “I really was very sorry to lose it because I loved my class; we were very cohesive. The teachers and coaches were all great, and the ring was one of my favorite possessions as a reminder of my unforgettable high school years,” reminisced Dalrymple.
Goodman, for her part, related that she was going through her great-aunt’s things as she does annually since she died in 1995.
She came upon the ring in the fall of 2016 and took it back to Los Angeles thinking it was her father’s.
“It turned out it was not his, so I took a closer look and noticed the initials,” she said.
“I looked online and saw there were two class members with these initials, one was female, and this was clearly a boy’s ring. So that’s what ultimately led me to Chuck in Sea Isle City.”
But not without a lot of detective work on Goodman’s part.
“I found Chuck on Facebook and noticed he had a store in Sea Isle,” she said. “I messaged him but never received a reply back which is understandable. Finally, on the ferry trip back to Vineland from Maryland where I spent a couple of days last month, I decided to drive from Cape May to Sea Isle and stop in Chuck’s store,” she continued.
“That’s when we met at last, and I was able to return the ring to its rightful owner,” she said.
Neither Dalrymple nor Goodman can explain how the ring traveled from its temporary home at the Sea Isle City beach to Vineland. Both conjecture that perhaps someone with a metal detector, perhaps Goodman’s great-uncle who was retired during this era, found the ring and then somehow it ended up with great-aunt Oneita Parker.
Dalrymple summed up this near-miracle, “I still get goosebumps thinking of this amazing coincidence and all the trouble Rosser went to so I was reunited with my ring.”
To contact Camille Sailer, email csailer@cmcherald.com.
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