Julie took the ring and knew it would always be one of her most prized possessions. A piece of the mother she’d loved and lost.
Later that year, a week before Christmas, Julie and Scott went to a jewelry store in downtown Ann Arbor and had the precious ring engraved. Julie would wear it in place of the smaller ring Scott had bought for their wedding.
“It’s the perfect symbol of love,” Scott told her as they watched the ring being engraved. “Her love to you, and our love to each other.”
The white-gold wedding band was nearly half an inch wide and the jeweler was able to engrave it with their initials and wedding date; the inside of the ring read: JAT-SMT-2-24-68.
“Now and forever this ring will be a reminder to you that I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you, Julie,” Scott told her as he placed it on her finger that afternoon. “And I’ll love you till the day I die.”
The marriage between Scott and Julie Tschirgi was everything they dreamed it would be. Two years later their son, Mike, was born followed by a daughter, Dena, and after that another daughter, Tara. The family was close-knit, spending weekends and afternoons camping and fishing the lakes in their area.
Then, one summer, the Tschirgi family went fishing at Half Moon Lake, less than an hour from Ann Arbor. It was a remote lake with a circumference of several miles, and it was a Tschirgi family favorite. The lake was surrounded by a wide rim of rocks that made fishing tricky. Fishermen had to maneuver their way along fifty yards of slippery boulders before reaching the water and casting their lines. But Scott and Julie believed the rocks kept the lake less populated and resulted in a greater catch each time they went. That fall was no exception, and as the day progressed the Tschirgis began reeling in one succulent catfish after another.
By then Mike was twelve and Tara, the youngest, was seven, and everyone in the family knew how to have fun on a fishing trip. Julie set up a fishing line for the children and helped them catch crawdads from between the rocks.
Finally the sun began to set, and the Tschirgis stopped fishing so they could eat, bundling into warmer clothes because of a chill in the fall air. When the meal was finished, no one wanted to go home; since the fish were biting so well, Scott and Julie agreed to stay longer for some night fishing. They retrieved their lantern from the car and fished until nearly midnight.
Giddy from the long day and the excitement of catching so many catfish and crawdads, the weary Tschirgi family made its way across the rocks toward their car. By then the temperature had dropped even further, and Scott flipped on the car’s heater so they could all have a chance to warm up.
Forty minutes later, when they were nearly home, Julianne suddenly gasped out loud.
“My wedding ring!” she cried. “It’s gone!”
Scott glanced across the car at his wife’s hand and saw that she was right. Where the ring had been on her finger was now bare.
“We have to go back. I need that ring.”
Scott sighed sadly. “It’s after one in the morning. The kids are beat and we have to get to bed. I can’t go all the way back there tonight.”
“Oh, no! I can’t believe I lost it. My hand must have gotten cold, and somehow the ring must have fallen off when I was casting out.”
Scott was silent a moment. The lake was so vast, the shore so long and covered with hundreds of rocks. Her ring could have fallen between the rocks or been washed out into the lake. There was no way they would ever find it now; he was certain of it.
“We have to go back tomorrow, then,” Julie insisted. “Scott, you know what that ring means to me.”
Scott nodded. “Yes, I know, honey. But I have to be at work in the morning.”
Julie’s eyes filled with tears, and her fingers began to shake. “What’ll we do?”
“Let’s go back next weekend and see if we can find it, all right?”
Reluctantly Julie agreed and waited what seemed like an eternity until the following weekend. First thing Saturday morning the family piled back into the car and returned to Half Moon Lake to search for the ring.
Although Scott thought he could lead the group to the same spot where they’d been fishing the previous weekend, the task was more difficult than he’d anticipated. The lake had very few landmarks, and since the rocky shore looked the same all the way around the water, the best he could do was guess at where they had been.
For several hours they hunted for the ring, turning over rocks and running their hands through the shallow water. But the ring was nowhere to be found. Before sundown a defeated Julie walked toward Scott and allowed him to pull her into a hug.
“It’s gone, Julie,” he said softly. “You have to accept it.”
Julie nodded, her chin quivering as she tried to fight back tears. “It meant so much to me, Scott,” she said, her voice breaking. “It’s the only tangible thing I have to remember Mom by ... and there’ll never be another one like it. I’m so sorry I lost it.”
Scott took her in his arms and smoothed a hand over her back. “You don’t need a ring to know how much your mother loved you ... and you don’t need it to know how much I love you, right?”
She dried a trail of tears and nodded. “Right.”
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “Let’s go home.”
After that Scott bought Julie another ring, but she was still crushed by the loss of her mother’s band and every time they visited the lake she held out a secret hope, a prayer that somehow they’d find it.
As the years passed, Julianne never forgot the ring, often joking that someday someone would catch a fish, cut it open, and find her ring inside.
“I just wish we’d engraved our phone number in it and not the wedding date,” she would say, only partly serious. “That way they could call me when it happens.”
But realistically, Julie knew the ring was gone for good. The seasons affected Half Moon Lake greatly, causing the water to recede thirty feet in some points each winter and spring before returning to its higher level in the summer.
Nearly twenty years passed and eventually Scott retired. He began playing daytime bingo once a week at a local church hall. Julie was still working but occasionally she joined him for a game of night bingo. Although their children had grown and left home to pursue their own lives, Scott and Julie still went fishing every weekend.
“The thing you’d like about the day crowd at the bingo hall,” Scott would tell Julie, “is that everyone there is into fishing. That’s all we talk about.”
In fact, Scott developed a friendship with one couple in particular. Lisa Chapman worked days at the church selling bingo cards. Early in their friendship Scott and Lisa discovered that Lisa and her husband had fished at many of the same lakes Scott and Julie had fished. Each week Scott and Lisa would exchange fishing tales, sharing stories about the biggest catches, the newest hot spots, and “the one that got away.” They learned that they lived just ten minutes from each other; on several occasions Lisa and her husband would attend night bingo and sit alongside Scott and Julie.
On December 22 that year, a day when Scott would normally have played bingo at the church, he decided not to go so that he could take care of some last-minute shopping.
“Find me my ring,” Julie said, her eyes half teasing, half sad. “Now that would be an amazing Christmas present.”
“More like a Christmas miracle.” Scott kissed her and smoothed a lock of hair off her forehead. “Go play bingo in my place today. See who caught the most fish over the weekend.”
Julie decided the idea was a good one. She had the day off, and since gifts she’d purchased were wrapped and under the tree she decided to go. Soon she was in line to purchase bingo cards and was pleased to see that Lisa Chapman was the one selling them.
“Where’s your honey?” Lisa asked lightly. “He hasn’t missed a Monday bingo session in months.”
“Christmas is in three days ...You know Scott,” Julianne said, pulling money from her purse to pay for her bingo cards.
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“Well, tell him I caught the biggest catfish of my life last weekend at Half Moon Lake.”
Julianne chuckled. “Listen,” she said. “If you cut that thing open and find a wedding ring, it’s mine. Lost it there twenty-two years ago.”
Suddenly Lisa’s face went slack and her mouth hung open. “What?” she asked.
“I said, if you find a ring in that fish, it’s probably mine. I lost my wedding ring at that lake twenty-two years ago.”
“Julie, you’re not going to believe this. That fish didn’t have a ring inside it, but fifteen years ago I found a wedding ring at that lake.”
“Are you serious?” Julie asked. Her face brightened but fell again just as quickly. “Oh, well,” she continued, shrugging off the possibility, “there’s no way it’s my ring. It’s been gone too long. I’m sure it’s at the bottom of the lake by now.”
“Wait, describe your ring.”
Julie looked strangely at Lisa. “It was a wide band, white gold with etchings on the top and bottom. And it was engraved.”
“Oh, my word, Julie, you aren’t going to believe this! I have that ring!”
Quickly Lisa recounted how she had found it.
Fifteen years earlier Lisa and her husband, Jim, had made an annual springtime trek to Half Moon Lake to search the shores for fishing lures. The lake typically receded so far that the rocks no longer lined the shore, and the people were able to climb past the rocks and walk along the sandy shoreline. That afternoon Lisa and Jim found very few usable lures, but they did find a wedding ring lying partially buried in the sand.
“Look at this,” Lisa had said to her husband that afternoon.
Jim had made his way toward his wife and examined the ring and its engraved markings on the inside. “A wedding ring,” he said. “I’ll bet someone’s been missing it.”
Lisa had then examined the ring once more and placed it in her pocket.
“What are you going to do with it?” Jim had asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but it’s obviously a nice ring. I can’t just leave it here on the beach.”
When they returned home, Lisa thought through her options. She could place an ad in the newspaper that covered Half Moon Lake area. But then people from hundreds of miles away fished at the lake, and there was no telling if the person who lost it would ever see the newspaper. She was also hesitant because of the date on the ring—February 24, 1968. If someone had lost the ring in the 1960s, they would certainly have stopped looking for it by now. In the end, Lisa decided her only option was to put it aside.
“I know I’ll never find the owner of that ring,” she had told her husband. “But it meant something to someone, and I can’t just throw it out.”
She placed it in a jar with other odds and ends and never thought about it again until Julie Tschirgi stood in front of her that June afternoon at the bingo hall.
“Wait a minute,” Lisa said as a dozen people in line listened to the exchange between the two women. Lisa summoned another worker to the table to take her place. “I’ll be right back. I’m going home to get that ring.”
Fifteen minutes later Lisa returned to the bingo hall with a large white gold wedding band on her finger. She walked up to Julie, who was sitting near a group of people who had heard the women talking about the ring. Julie and the others were now waiting anxiously to see if it was indeed the missing ring.
At home Lisa had checked the initials on the ring and knew instantly that it was Julie’s missing wedding band. Grinning wildly, she approached Julie and held up her hand.
“Looky here,” she said.
Julie was shocked. She stood slowly and moved toward Lisa, never taking her eyes from the ring. It was the very ring her mother had worn, the one she and Scott had taken in to be engraved, the one she’d prayed to find every day since losing it nearly two decades earlier. She would have known the ring from across the bingo hall, but she reached out and removed it from Lisa’s hand, turning it over in her own.
“It’s my ring,” she said finally, tears falling onto her cheeks. “We got it engraved at Christmas and now I’m getting it back at Christmas. I can’t believe it.”
As she said the words, the people around her broke into a loud round of applause. Several of them had glistening eyes themselves at the sight of Julie’s happy tears.
“Is this unbelievable or what?” Lisa said. “You lost the ring all those years ago, I find it years after that, and now fifteen years after that we play bingo together, and all this time I’ve had your ring sitting in a jar in my house.”
At that moment the pastor of the church heard the commotion and approached them. He listened to the story behind the ring, and then Julie asked him if he would bless it.
“Mrs. Tschirgi, I don’t believe that’s necessary,” the pastor said. “If the good Lord helped you find that ring after all these years—at Christmastime no less—I’d say that ring has already been blessed.”
Again the crowd erupted into applause, and Lisa and Julie embraced.
“Thank you doesn’t seem like enough,” Julie said, laughing through her tears. “I’ve never forgotten this ring, even after all these years. And now it’s mine again.”
Later Scott and Julie considered the odds against what had happened. The lake was almost an hour away from their home. It was absurd to imagine that a neighbor would visit the same lake where she’d lost her ring and find it there after years of high and low tides. Not to mention that they would then befriend that neighbor and that one day Julie would mention the missing ring in front of her.
“Even if that lake was completely dry and we searched up and down the length of it every day for an entire summer, we very well might never have found that ring,” Scott told his wife as they wondered over the wedding band once more. “It should have been several feet under sand after all that time.”
“But it wasn’t. And now it’s mine once more.”
The couple was silent for a moment. “Scott, do you believe in miracles?” Julie asked him.
“Of course,” he said as he pulled Julie close. “I told you that ring was a sign of very strong love ... your mother’s and ours. Now it’s found its way back. Merry Christmas, honey.”
Christmas Angels
Austin Rozelle was four years old when his parents noticed his imagination truly taking wing. He loved sports, particularly basketball, and often pretended to be the greatest player of all, Michael Jordan. At bedtime when the Rozelles’ children asked for favorite bedtime stories, Austin’s request never changed.
“Tell me a Michael Jordan story, Daddy, please!”
And Burt Rozelle would make up a story involving Austin and Michael Jordan and some type of crucial basketball game. It got so that as Christmas approached that year, Austin wanted only one thing: a visit from Michael Jordan. Throughout the month of December, when the doorbell would ring at the Rozelle house, Austin would run toward the front door yelling, “It’s probably Michael Jordan!”
So it was that three days before Christmas, when Austin dribbled his child-sized basketball into the family’s Portland, Oregon, house and announced he was going to Michael’s house, his mother thought nothing of it. Austin was always pretending to be visiting with Michael Jordan or taking a trip to his house.
That Sunday afternoon the air was particularly damp and Austin tugged on his mother’s skirt while she washed the dishes. “Bye, Mom. I’m going to see Michael Jordan.”
Stella Rozelle smiled at the child. “Okay, Austin, have fun.”
Obviously Austin had no idea where Michael Jordan lived, nor the truth that he did not live in Oregon. Even if he had known the exact location, Stella knew the boy would never really leave the house. Especially by himself.
Austin was merely playing a game of make-believe, as he had so many other times, and Stella felt at ease as she continued her conversation and watched the child disappear into the backyard.
Fifteen minutes later Stella finished the dishes and saun
tered outside to round up Austin and his six-year-old brother, Daniel. The older child was swinging on the family swingset, happily humming a tune from Sunday school earlier that day. The temperature was dropping, and Stella wanted the children to come inside before they caught cold.
“It’s getting too cold out here, buddy. Let’s go inside and have some dinner.” She stood up and glanced around the yard. “Where’s Austin?”
Daniel shrugged as he jumped off the swing. “He was dribbling his ball and he went out that way.” Daniel pointed down the street. “He told me he was going to see Michael Jordan.”
Suddenly Stella’s blood ran cold as she remembered a billboard she’d forgotten until now. It was two miles away on Martin Luther King Boulevard and it had a larger-than-life photograph of Michael Jordan. “Daniel, you don’t think he’s going to that billboard picture of Michael Jordan, do you?”
Daniel thought for a moment and then shrugged. “Probably. He told me once that he thinks Michael lives there.”
Stella’s heart was immediately in her throat. She ran in the house, found Burt in the computer room, and explained the situation.
“You can’t find him anywhere?” Burt’s face immediately drained of all its color.
She felt panic welling within her and she shook her head. “He’s gone, Burt. Pray. Please pray.”
Stella called a neighbor to come stay with Daniel and she and Burt searched the house and yard again.
“What’s the last thing you remember him saying or doing?” Burt asked as they climbed into the car and set off slowly down the street, straining to see into every yard.
Stella ran her fingers nervously through her hair. “I was doing dishes, getting ready for dinner, when Austin came in with his ball and told me he was going to see Michael Jordan.”
“He says that all the time.”
“Exactly. I thought he was just playing and I said okay.”
Burt rounded the corner as the two of them exchanged a terrified look. Thirty minutes had passed since Austin’s disappearance. If their son had attempted the two-mile walk to Martin Luther King Boulevard by himself, he could have been kidnapped or hit by a car. In addition, the weather had forecasted snow and Austin wasn’t dressed warmly enough for the near-freezing temperatures. Most frightening of all, he could be anywhere because the child was too young to have any sense of direction.