WISCASSET, Maine — Logan Laliberte and his fiancé Brittany were just looking for a spot to dip into the ocean while visiting Fort Edgecomb three years ago. They weren't expecting to dip so deeply into history, though, after discovering an old beat-up class ring jammed into some rocks along the shore.
"It was very roughed up. It had spent a lot of time there. There was a crack in there and the gold looked like copper more than anything else," Laliberte explained.
All he could make out engrained into the ring was "Wiscasset" and "Class of 1934." He brought it to a friend to clean up.
"I think he noticed the initials on the back because he polished it. That's when the digging started," Laliberte said.
After three years of light digging through online archives and the local library, Laliberte connected with Sheila Sawyer, secretary of Wiscasset's alumni. Sawyer stores a lot of the history of the school in her home, so she knows quite a bit about the graduating classes.
"I said, 'Did it have any initials on it to identify it?' And he said, 'Yes, the initials are HWL and I wondered if you know who it would be,' and I said, 'Yes I do know," Sawyer said.
Sawyer knew because she grew up with the son of Harold Walter Leavitt: HWL. Walter, known to most in town as Skip, couldn't believe what Sawyer told him when she called.
"My father never talked about either having a class ring or losing a class ring," Leavitt said.
He believes his father lost his class ring shortly after graduation, likely hanging out with his 12 other classmates at Fort Edgecomb, which sits just across the bridge from what, at the time, would have been Wiscasset Academy.
"First thing I had to do was pinch myself because I just couldn't [believe it]. I thought this is not possible, I mean, of all the people that graduated from Wiscasset High School and all the years to find my father's ring it's just like, this is really radical," Leavitt said.
He arranged to meet with Laliberte to get the ring back, and the two connected over the history of the ring and the man who wore it—even if only for a short time 79 years ago.
"Just to know," Laliberte said of that first meeting. "Just to kind of understand the energy of the ring that I was wearing. I'm glad I found out. Seems like he was an upstanding Maine man. I'm proud to have worn it for a few years."
Harold Leavitt passed away 30 years ago. Skip said wearing his ring is almost spiritual.
"I have a lot of connections to my father, but this was one I never had," Leavitt said.
As he walks through Fort Edgecomb with Laliberte, Leavitt hangs on a little tighter to the ring, grateful for the three-year effort to find him.
"I hope there's always another generation of people that are concerned and care about the past, and I want to make the future as good as they can make it," Leavitt said.
And Sawyer, nervous that first phone call could have been a scam, was glad to have some part in this story.
"I do like puzzles, people puzzles, not puzzles sitting here on the table. But I do like to put these puzzles together and it is a happy ending," Sawyer said.