50 years old but good as new

In a few short months, 50 years will have passed since the Suring Class of 1965 graduated from high school. On that graduation day, one of the graduates, Jay Tousey, was not wearing his class ring. Tousey received his class ring near the end of his junior year with the anticipation of wearing it his senior year, but fate had other plans. Fast forward to Jan. 29, 2015. Suring High School agriculture teacher Ashley Johnson asked students to help take inventory of shop supplies and equipment. As students Lily Leurquin and Tayelor Schroth looked in an old locker used for storage, they spotted something gold and shiny. Upon a closer look, they discovered it was a 1965 Suring class ring. After looking at a photograph of 1965 graduates, only one graduate shared the initials on the ring — Jay Tousey. A quick call to Tousey, Suring’s village president, confirmed he had lost his ring during his senior year of high school. Tousey came to school the next day to retrieve his ring. Upon seeing the locker where the ring was found, he recognized it as one of the student lockers that once lined the hall of Suring High. When the school was remodeled in the 1990s, the old lockers were distributed to whomever wanted them. Three of the lockers ended up in the ag shop to be used for tool storage. When Tousey attended high school in the 1960s, the shop was located in the part of the school where the kindergarten rooms are now. The school only had one shop for both agriculture and industrial arts, taught by Ivan Gruetzmacher and Dave Ankley. “We just had general ag and shop classes back then, not the specialized classes of today. The boys took shop and the girls took home economics,” Tousey recalled, while visiting with Johnson’s class in the “new” shop in the newer part of the school. When asked if he ever gave his ring to a girl, he laughed and quipped, “I wasn’t one of the jocks. The girls came to me for comfort when they broke up with their boyfriends. They wouldn’t go out with me, but they would cry on my shoulder.” Tousey wore his ring upon leaving school. No, it didn’t fit on his ring finger, but he was able to put it on his little finger. For being 50 years old, the ring was good as new.