1938 VHS
Published 12:00 am Monday, May 8, 2006
class ring ends up in Michigan|[5/08/06].
The Old Court House Museum has a new addition to its collection, a 1938 Vicksburg High School class ring.
The story of how it got here is worth telling. First it’s important to know there’s more than one Vicksburg.
“We got a letter in the mail from the Vicksburg Historical Society in Michigan saying they had received a donation of a VHS class ring,” said Bubba Bolm of the Old Court House here.
Given that there are also Vicksburgs Colorado and Arizona, museum curator Gordon Cotton said it’s no wonder it didn’t end up in the right town.
“They thought, of course, that it was from Vicksburg, Mich., until they looked closely and found a cannon and magnolia blossom on the sides,” Bolm said.
The Vicksburg in Mississippi is the only one to have had a direct connection with the Civil War and probably the only one to have had a population big enough to have class rings, Cotton said. All the other Vicksburgs have smaller populations.
The Michigan society mailed the ring to the Vicksburg and Warren County Historical Society, whose collection is housed at the Old Court House.
The gold ring with red stone belonged to a woman, Cotton said. But the mystery was who the initials inscribed on the inside, M.L.S., represented.
“We called Ethel Pickens because we thought she might could help us,” Bolm said.
Pickens, coordinator of an all-school Carr Central reunion in 2004, has made efforts for years to track CCHS graduates.
“The fact that it said Vicksburg HS from 1938 threw me,” she said. “Carr Central was a ninth- through 12th-grade school from the fall of 1932 through the fall of 1959. But when I remembered all of our class rings said Vicksburg HS, I knew it had to be one of us.”
Pickens has contact information for members of all classes, except the classes that graduated during the wartime in the early ’40s.
“We’re lucky we’ve worked hard to intertwine our lives with each other to try to stay bonded. It’s very helpful,” she said.
Pickens made a phone call to a 1938 graduate, Betty Biedenharn.
“I told her to think if she could remember anyone with those initials, and she knew immediately the ring belonged to Marie Louise Sullivan,” Pickens said.
After tracking down Sullivan, who is now in her mid-80s and lives in Mandeville, La., Bolm said Sullivan remembered losing the ring but had no idea how it ended up in Michigan.
“She said she had wondered what ever happened to the ring, but she had definitely never been to Michigan,” Bolm said.
The possible twist is that the name of the person who donated the ring to the historical society in Michigan, Eric Svendson, sounded familiar to Sullivan, Bolm said.
“She thought he might be a nephew or a great-nephew or something. In the letter sent to us, Mr. Svendson said his mother graduated from the University of Michigan, and maybe that’s how it ended up there,” Bolm said.
“There’s more to this story somewhere, it’s just finding out what it is,” he said.
But in the meantime, Sullivan has donated the ring to the Vicksburg and Warren County Historical Society to be displayed in the Old Court House Museum.
“It’s a neat little addition. We’re glad to have it, regardless,” Bolm said.