Treasured ring of Will County judge was lost for 14 years - but now is found

Raymond Nash, a 12th judicial circuit court associate judge in Will County, said he was in the middle of a court call when the assistant attorney general handed his clerk a note.

Nash said the note read, “Are you missing your class ring?”

It was, Nash said, an “Oh, my God” moment. Nash had lost that ring almost 14 years to the day at the former Joliet Golf Club and had long given up hope of ever seeing it again, he said.

“I was just heartbroken and remained heartbroken up until yesterday,” Nash said on Tuesday.

Dennis Gretencord of Ottawa, a four-year member of the Will County Historical Research and Recovery Association, found the ring on Sunday. The ring was about 8 inches into the ground and 40 to 60 yards away from the seventh hole, Nash said.

Nash’s despair of having lost it and his elation at its return are due to the class ring being more than a ring.

‘I always wanted to be like my father’

Nash said he comes from a military family. His father, John Nash of Shorewood, was a Vietnam veteran and had graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis. From boyhood on, Raymond admired his father and his father’s class ring from 1959 with its black onyx stone.

“I always wanted to be like my father,” Raymond said. “I was actually offered an appointment to the Naval Academy so I could be like my father. I was a football player, like my father, at Minooka High School.”

But the Naval Academy sent Raymond a letter telling him he could not attend with his uncorrectable 20/40 vision, Raymond said.

“I had to reinvent myself and go in a different direction,” Raymond.

That direction was Valparaiso University. Raymond said his father promised him that, when Raymond was close to graduating, he would “pick me out something very close” to John’s class ring. That was in the early 1980s.

At the time, the cost of gold “had gone crazy,” Raymond said, adding that his father had even paid extra to include the inscription.

“Even though it was an expensive ring, it had nothing to do with that,” Raymond said, explaining why he loved the ring. “Any monetary value was meaningless. It was my treasure, my gift from my father.”

Raymond said he treasured the ring so much, he never took it off.

Until that day on the golf course.

Waiting to be found

Raymond said the day was hot and humid, and his fingers were swelling. So Raymond removed his class ring and his wedding ring and tucked them into his pockets. When the game ended, Raymond retrieved his wedding ring. But the class ring was gone.

“Of course I told him,” Raymond said about breaking the news to his father. “I thought he handled it well. I was the one who was upset. Obviously, he was not happy about it. But he didn’t beat me up over it. I was beating myself up for it and had for 14 years.”

When the Joliet Golf Club closed last year, Raymond said he gave up hope at that point – except to mentally “kick” and berate himself on “how incredibly careless” he’d been on the golf course.

“Every time I passed it, I’d think, ‘Well, maybe it’s out there somewhere,’” Raymond said.

Raymond said he recently listened to a sermon about lost objects – keys, cell phones, etc. – and how they are not lost to God, if only He’d point the way.

“Of course, He knew it was out there the whole time,” Raymond said.

Gretencord said he found the ring about 10 a.m. Sunday morning on the golf course where he and other members of the Will County Historical Research and Recovery Association were searching for metal objects with the owner’s permission.

He’s found “cool stuff” in other locations through the years: Civil War-era buttons, silver collar coins and “a couple of homesites that are not on any plat maps,” Gretencord said.

“It was the first time I’ve found a class ring,” Gretencord said. “So I took some pictures and sent them to my wife.”

Between reading the inscription and searching for Raymond name through old yearbooks, the Gretencords were able to identify the owner. So Gretencord reached out to the courthouse.

Members of the Will County Historical Research and Recovery Association presented the ring to Raymond at its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday night.

Ironically, now that Raymond has the ring, he’s not planning on keeping it forever.

“It will go to my son,” Raymond said, “who is named after my father John Nash.”