It's a ring lost in time, until now

One could call it a mystery solved, but only partially, very partially, since one resolved fact has only led to more mystery involving a pair of 1950s Cloquet High School graduates and their children.

This is the curious case of the 1952 CHS class ring.

On Sunday, Jody Larson of Bemidji is expecting to meet up with Bill Gannon of Cloquet to hand him a ring that hasn't seen the light of day in decades. It is assumed that the ring belongs to Gannon, since he was the only 1952 Cloquet graduate with initials that match those on the ring, W.G., for William Gannon.

Larson found the ring while going through her late father's possessions. Jim Johnson died in 2021 and Larson recalled hearing an old story about the class ring, that it was found during some sort of sewer work being done in the later 1950s in front of Johnson's childhood home on the 300 block of Ninth Street in Cloquet. It was found on a tree root by city workers, the story went. Apparently it went into a box in the Clifford and Mary Johnson home and was forgotten about, despite distinct signs that it was a Cloquet class ring from 1952 with the W.G. initials. Johnson graduated a year after Gannon, in 1953, and apparently later inherited the ring as part of his parents' estate.

And it could have been handed down another generation and forgotten had it not been for Larson's recent sleuthing. She found a 1952 Cloquet yearbook and put the pieces together. There was only one W.G. in the senior class that year. Once she had Gannon's name, she came across an online obituary for his wife Ethel, who died in 2018. She called Nelson Funeral Care and asked if someone could put her in touch with any of the Gannon relatives.

Enter Patti Haus of Cloquet, daughter of Bill Gannon. Larson called her and told her the story of the ring. Haus was baffled. She had never heard her father talk about the ring.

Be it resolved that the ring was once worn by Bill Gannon. What remains unresolved is why the Johnson family had the ring all these years despite the clear clues it contains. And yet something else remains unresolved: Gannon doesn't recall losing his class ring.

"Maybe I gave it to a girlfriend and she lost it," Gannon said this week, some mirth in his voice. "It's a nice surprise, but I had no idea I had lost it. There's not much I can tell you."

There could be a reason for the lack of recall, aside from the fact that the ring story begins more than 70 years ago, a real memory stretcher. "I didn't like school," he admitted, perhaps meaning that losing the ring had no significance for him at the time, so there was no reason to rue its loss.

No matter, come Sunday, Larson will meet Gannon and hand over the ring. "I could give it to another girlfriend," Gannon said with a laugh.