Long lost ring from 1962 recovered in Princeton yard; Janice Isaacson tells her story

As many young couples do, Janice May and her then-boyfriend, Larry Isaacson, got into a bit of a spat while on a date in 1962.

She was a junior at Princeton High School, and he had graduated from Malden High School.

She got out of the car on Park Avenue East in Princeton, only a block from her home, and threw the ring he had made for her in a moment of anger up over the car onto the yard across the street.

“Larry and I got mad at each other, which we often did,” she said. “I lived on Park Avenue and got out of the car in front of Greenfield and threw the ring at him.”

She doesn’t remember what they were arguing about.

“It was probably something stupid. We were teenagers. [It] could have been anything,” she said.

And how long did it take for them to make up?

“Oh, probably the next day,” she said with a laugh.

She went back the next day to look for the ring to no avail.

The couple married in 1965, but the ring, which was specifically made for her duplicating Larry’s 1960 class ring from Malden, was lost and never to be found again.

Until now.

I said, ‘God, I’m placing this in your hands. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. That’s what I do with everything.”

—  Janice Isaacson

With the help of Tim and Ryan Manahan, Princeton postal carriers who came equipped with metal detectors, and the permission of Todd Burrows, who owned the property on Park Avenue East, the long lost ring was found, buried about 4½ inches in the ground.

Just where Janice knew it was all along.

“My son (John) asked me two weeks ago to come over and show him where I threw it,” Janice said. “I showed him the exact house next to the Prompt Care. I said, ‘There’s the yard I threw it at,’ and that’s exactly where they found it.”

Janice was so nervous that she said couldn’t stay while they were looking.

“When I was leaving, I said, ‘God, I’m placing this in your hands. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,’” she said. “That’s what I do with everything. I had to do that with Larry’s sickness and a lot of other things.”

But the treasure hunt didn’t come easy. The Manahans, along with Janice’s son John, spent 3½ hours on a Saturday. All they found were beer tabs and bottle caps.

The Manahans came back the next day, and on the very last spot Ryan had time to search for, they hit gold – literally.

“Ryan said, ‘This is the last hole I can dig because I’ve got to go,’ and he found it,” Tim Manahan said.

John Isaacson said he gave up all hope after the first night that the ring would ever be found.

“When they called me and said, ‘We got it,’ I said, ‘No way,’” John said. “They handed me the ring, and I started crying.”

John originally thought he’d wait and wrap up the ring to give his mom for Christmas, but he knew she couldn’t wait. He told her he wanted to come over to tell her and his sister about something, but it wasn’t anything bad.

“My daughter had a puzzled look on her face. She had no idea what he was talking about. I said, ‘I know.’ I just knew he found that ring,” Janice Isaacson said.

“He comes in with a baggy of pennies and beer tabs and pop caps and he throws it on my table and said, ‘This is what we found.’ I looked at my granddaughter, and she had the biggest grin on her face I’ve ever seen. I said, ‘You found it.’ I knew it before he told me.”

What Janice calls her “miracle ring” was surprisingly in great shape. Larry had sold his own ring to use the money to make one for his future bride.

“He had that ring made just for me,” she said. “When it went underground, it wasn’t very old. Came out looking brand new except for the silver, which was a little tarnished.”

It was a much discussed subject of family conversation over the years. Sadly, Larry didn’t live long enough to see the recovery of the ring. He died in April 2015 shortly after the couple celebrated their 50th anniversary.

“My family knew about this, and we always looked for it, but we never had a medal detector,” Janice Isaacson said. “I always had faith I’d find it one day. I was hoping I’d find it when my husband was still around, so he wasn’t mad at me about it.

“Larry was more of a negative thinker, so he probably thought we’d never find it. But I think he had a little something helping me find it.

Janice said her husband, who was known as “Eagle Eye” for his ability to find lost items, would be “awful happy and would have been telling me I shouldn’t have thrown it. I wished I hadn’t thrown it, too.”

Now that the miracle ring has been found, Janice said, “It’s never going to be lost again.”