Anderson grad gets lost class ring back after waiting 44 years

Photo by George L. Winship, Editor

IT STILL FITS -- Anderson Union High School alumnus Vickie (Romero) Adkisson receives the 1966 class ring she lost in October of 1965 from Cottonwood's U.S. Postmaster Beverly Fickes, whose father Walter Hicks found the ring 15 years ago while metal detecting on the Red Bluff High School athletic field where a set of visitor bleachers was being replaced. The initials "V" and "R" led Fickes to eventually discover and track down Gib and Vickie Adkisson in Clovis, Calif., near Fresno. The return of the ring ceremony, held 44 years later, took place Oct. 23, 2009, on the campus of Anderson Union High School, which recently celebrated its centennial.

After 44 years, Anderson Union High School graduate Vickie Romero - now Vickie Adkisson of Clovis, near Fresno - has her original 1966 class ring back on her finger.

"It still fits," Adkisson said with a surprised laugh after trying it on Friday just outside the administration wing of the high school that she attended years ago.

Adkisson, who turned 61 on Sunday, Oct. 25, remembers exactly where and when she lost the original ring that she later replaced.

"I was a high school senior in the late fall of 1965. The month before I lost it, I had received my Class of 1966 ring, which I had ordered during my junior year. I remember working all summer long picking olives in my parent's orchard in Happy Valley to earn enough money to purchase the ring," Adkisson recalled.

On a Friday night, most likely in October, the young Vickie Romero attended a high school football game played in Red Bluff. She had a mild case of poison ivy and didn't want the ring ruined by the medication she had rubbed on her hands, so she placed the ring in her purse and sat in the visitor's grandstand to watch the Anderson Cubs take on the Red Bluff Spartans.

"At some point during the game, my purse fell off the bleacher seat to the ground below. I quickly followed to retrieve it and found most of the contents had fallen out as well. I scratched around in the dark as best I could and found most of my things, but I could not find the ring," she said.

"I was very sick that had lost my class ring, so I convinced my mother to go back with me the next morning. I remember on the drive down hearing the Beatles' new hit song "Yesterday," and I just kept thinking of the lyrics and how well they matched my situation.

"Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, Now I need a place to hide away . . .," Adkisson began to sing the familiar lyrics to the tune had been released earlier that same summer but was just beginning to top the record charts beginning Oct. 9, 1965.

Although they searched the entire area under that particular area of the grandstand where she had been sitting the night before, no sign of the ring was ever found," Adkisson said.

Flash forward nearly 30 years.

Walter Hicks of Cottonwood was pursuing his weekend hobby of metal detecting and was closely going over the ground where those same visitor bleachers had just been torn down to be replaced.

Hicks placed the ring in his treasure trove and didn't think much more of it for the next 15 years until June 2009, when he was reading the Valley Post's description of an upcoming centennial celebration and all-class reunion at Anderson Union High School during the Labor Day weekend.

Hicks took the ring to his daughter, Beverly Fickes, the U.S. Postmaster in Cottonwood, who eventually tracked down Vickie Romero, now married more than 34 years to Gid Adkisson and matched the story of the missing ring with the finding of it.

After retrieving the ring, the Adkissons took a quick tour of the campus.