A New Jersey woman has been reunited with her mom’s wedding ring more than 55 years after both her parents were tragically killed in a Washington state plane crash.
Joyce Wharton was stunned to be contacted by a lumberjack who’d discovered the priceless 5-stone gold diamond band, reports Q13Fox.
He’d found it firmly lodged inside a tree near the site of the devastating 1959 accident that saw her mom Hazel and dad Hugh Armstrong sadly die.
“You just think it’s impossible to get a ring back after all those years,” Wharton told NJ.com.
“It was like my mother was reaching down from heaven,” the 78-year-old San Antonio native, who’s been living in New Jersey since 1963, added.
The couple’s daughter, who now lives in Wayne, was left orphaned after her parents went missing while flying their 4-seater plane over western Washington.
“He was a very experienced pilot and they flew that morning out of Portland to Seattle and never arrived,” Wharton, who was living in Texas and newly married, told PIX11.
Their final resting place remained a mystery for 14 years, until hunters discovered the crash site a few miles outside of Centralia in 1973.
“At that time they really didn’t find anything – they found my dad’s wallet and a few little buttons,” said Wharton.
Then, some 24 years after that in 1997, logger Nick Buchanan was out walking when he stumbled across a small cedar tree.
“I’m digging in the roots and flipped that ring out,” he told Q13Fox.
After doing some research, he discovered the band belonged to the Armstrongs. But he tucked it away and kept it safe for another 17 years.
“I never once though it belonged to me. I just was hoping there was a daughter or a family member I could turn it over to,” said Buchanan.
Then, his nephew did some online research – and discovered that the couple’s daughter was in fact alive and well in New Jersey.
Buchanan contacted Wharton, and after verifying she was who he thought she was, he sent back the ring – which arrived in the mail on Wednesday.
“Sunday morning he called me and he asked me some questions,” Wharton told NJ.com.
“He says ‘I’ve been looking for you.’ Then he said ‘Joyce, I found your mother’s wedding ring and I want to give it back to you,” she said.
“It’s such a precious memento and this logger found it when he was out in the woods poking around at the base of a tree with a stick. This ring just popped out and he’s been looking for me ever since,” she added.
