The reunion of a Santa Rosa High teacher and his family ring

It’s unknowable why high school wood shop teacher Henry Jourdain noticed when he did that the ring his sisters perhaps shouldn’t have given him was missing from his left pinky.

It was about month ago and Henry was driving home from a visit to Santa Rosa’s Kaiser Permanente complex (routine matter, don’t worry). He gasped and his heart clenched to see the ring was gone.

“It was my father’s wedding band,” he said. Instantly he imagined that it had slipped off while he was in a restroom at Kaiser, washing his hands with that “slippery, foamy soap.”

He returned at once to the medical center and to the men’s room. Somewhat relieved to see that the ring could not have gone down the drain, he also was disappointed not to find it there on the sink or floor. He even dug through the trash can.

Henry, who teaches at Santa Rosa High School, inquired at the appropriate desk if anyone had reported finding a ring. No.

It was a long drive home. “I was surprised how emotional I was,” Henry said.

His father, Charles Jourdain, long ago the proprietor of a ceramics shop in Sonoma, wore the ring from the day not long after World War II that he married the former Muriel Chase until his death in 1992. Inscribed inside was, “All my love M.C to C.J. 11-13-48.”

Murial Jourdain died in 1979. For years, one of her daughters wore her wedding ring and her second daughter wore her engagement ring and Charles Jourdain’s wedding ring.

About a year ago, Henry asked if he might have his father’s band. The sister who’d worn and treasured it judged her brother’s request fair and reasonable, and gave it to him.

Henry liked having it on his hand. After discovering it missing, he checked back at Kaiser and also mentioned the loss to his co-workers in the school office at Santa Rosa High.

He did not, however, mention the matter to his sisters. Not long ago, the three of them were together and Henry naturally wondered if one sister or the other might notice that dad’s ring was not on his finger.

Nope. But Henry assumed that one unhappy day a sister would ask about the ring, or conscience would force him to come clean about the loss that he could scarcely more regret.

One day last week, he was in his classroom when the phone rang. It was the office. Hadn’t he mentioned that he’d lost a ring?

Why, yes. Well, there’s a man at the counter who found a ring.

Moments later, Henry, his pulse markedly quickened, met Bob Moreno.

Bob is an engineer who days earlier had been on the Santa Rosa High campus for a track meet. He was walking on the drive near the stadium when a glittery flick caught his eye

He bent and picked up a silvery ring. He took it home, read the inscription and imagined how sorry someone must be to have lost it.

As Bob contemplated how he might find the owner, he returned to Santa Rosa High to report his discovery at the school office. Someone there remembered Mr. Jourdain speaking of a lost ring. The call was made to the wood shop room, and a student escorted Bob there.

Bob asked Henry to describe the ring and inscription. Right on. So Bob handed it over.

“I’m forever in his debt,” the teacher said.

As a bonus, there appears to be no way that Henry’s sisters will ever find out that he’d managed, for a while, to lose their father’s ring.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith?@pressdemocrat.com.