Finding treasured gold
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on April 4, 2016 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Pam and Lee Casey pose for a photo at Casey Nursery Thursday. Lee Casey's wedding band had been missing for 33 years, but was recently found at United Church Ministries where he had been doing renovations years ago.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Pictured are Lee and Pam Casey on their wedding day in 1980, left, the couple at their son Hunter's wedding and a ring box that contains Pam's original wedding rings that she has since upgraded and Lee's replacement band that he only wore for a short period of time.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Lee and Pam Casey wear their original wedding bands from when they were wed on June 28, 1980. Lee lost his ring in 1983 and only recently was it discovered and returned to him. Pam has since upgraded her ring.
When Lee Casey wed Pamela Cox on June 28, 1980, the ring she placed on his finger was too big.
But not enough of a problem that he went and had it sized.
Three years later, when it went missing, he could not tell you when or where he had lost it.
"I imagined it just fell off. I just didn't realize it was gone," he shrugged.
Lacking any recollection of where it might have slipped off, he didn't spend any time searching for it, he says.
His mother, Mary Rose Casey, tells a different version of the story.
A story about mission work, something modeled by her late husband, Martin, who passed away March 19, 2011.
"Martin was faithful to work with United Church Ministries as long as he lived," she said. "(Lee) was a young man working with his dad. Martin was in charge of the renovation (on Walnut Street). Of course, he drafted us all."
Mrs. Casey said they returned to look for the ring but came up empty.
"He'd gotten a replacement and wore that for a while," she said. "But due to the work that he was doing, he stopped wearing it."
Lee, who owns Casey Nursery, respectfully deferred to his mother's recollection.
"It's sad when your 85-year-old mother has a better memory than you do," he said with a laugh. "According to her, we went back and looked and looked. I thought I had lost it at the nursery.
"Whenever the initial construction was, we did a lot of cleanup. I do remember doing a lot of electrical work, helping the electrical contractor. We went there several nights doing the construction."
Then recently, Mrs. Casey, carrying on her husband's legacy of mission work and service, brought a food donation to the United Church Ministries storefront office on Walnut Street.
"The director, Mary Fail, came out with a man's wedding band and said they were doing some repair work and this ring was found upstairs," she said. "They were trying to find out who it belonged to.
"She asked, 'Can you remember hearing if anyone lost a ring when doing that work?' I said, 'As a matter of fact, my son.'"
Lee was 25 at the time, she said, and had been married three years.
"'When did he get married?,' (Ms. Fail) asked. I said, 'In 1980,'" Mrs. Casey said. "She turned the ring over and read the inscription -- PCC and LRC (Pamela Cox Casey and Lee Randolph Casey) 6-28-80."
Mrs. Casey promptly phoned her son, but did not want to spoil the surprise.
"Mother called me and just left a voicemail that whenever I could, if I could come by the house, she had something for me," he said. "When I walked in, she said, 'I just want to give you something.' She put it in my hand, 'There's your wedding ring.'
"It's amazing to me, the sequence of events that had to happen to get me the ring back -- had mother not been there, the director wouldn't have mentioned it to mother; it could have laid there for years and years."
It had already been there for 33 years, undetected.
"I knew it had been a long time," Lee said recently. "I had not worn a wedding ring for about 30 years because we had an employee who had an accident because of a wedding ring. So I took mine off."
Reunited with his original wedding band, this time he went to have it sized.
He didn't tell his wife about the discovery until he picked it up from the jeweler.
"It took them about a week to size it," he said. "When I got it back, it just happened that it was a day that we had two meetings. I didn't see (my wife) until about 9:30 that night.
"She usually notices everything, but she didn't. I finally had to show her. She was just taken aback."
Now, he said, he wears it all the time.
And the couple, celebrating 36 years together in June, have one more memory to share in their happily ever after.
"It kind of gives you renewed confidence in mankind, that it would find its way back," he said, although admitting when he first had to tell his new wife he lost the ring, it was not well received.
"She was not a real happy bride," he said with a smile.
Pam Casey, a science teacher at Rosewood Middle School, said she has shared the fortuitous story with some of her students but isn't going out to buy a lottery ticket just yet.
"I'd rather be lucky in life than some drawing," says the mother of three.
Lee, 57, took the find a step further, seeking out the workman who found it, Billy Holloman.
"I have spoken with him and asked him, I was going to send him a certificate for a steak dinner or whatever," he said. "And all he asked -- he was extremely happy it came back to the owner -- he asked me to make a donation to the children's program at church.
"I did make a donation to the United Church Ministries to their walk-a-thon. I have not done the church donation yet but I will."
Editor's note: Mary Rose Casey passed away shortly after the interview for this story, almost five years to the day after her husband, on March 18.