The story begins with an unusual request received at Flat Rock Together from an amateur metal detectorist living in North Carolina. Rebekah wrote:

Hello. A fellow metal detectorist acquaintance of mine found a class ring from 1943. Based on the engraved initials and history he believes it may have belonged to Richard W. Deneke who appears to have resided in Flat Rock with his wife Karin. Maybe you can bridge the gap in locating him or a family member.

Intrigued, a quick google search led me to an obituary for Karin Deneke who died in Stone Mountain, GA in 2014. Her obituary mentioned that she and her husband Richard “Dick” Deneke had retired to a golf course community in Flat Rock, NC in 1987 and resided there for 20 years.

A “golf course community in Flat Rock” could only mean one place: Kenmure. I immediately knew whom to contact to learn more about the Denekes.

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The genesis for this story was really Dick Deneke’s graduation from the Colorado School of Mines in 1943. Dick studied engineering in college and was a member of the campus ROTC. Upon graduation, Dick, wearing his newly minted class ring, entered the US Army where he served as a Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. The United States was deeply involved in World War II and the young soldier eventually found himself stationed in England near the coast of the English Channel.

Lieutenant Deneke spent his days abroad helping to build and maintain facilities to house and feed American soldiers massing on the east coast of England. Then, on a cold and cloudy June day in 1944, the lieutenant saw something he vividly remembers to this day. “One morning I went out and the channel was full of ships. It was D-day.” Dick Deneke was witnessing the start of the invasion of Normandy.

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Rebekah’s request for help was certainly unexpected, but I was game and knew whom to contact for help. Nick Weedman, who some describe as the unofficial mayor of Kenmure and who currently serves as the very official mayor of Flat Rock, is a go-to source for all things Kenmure. My email to Nick with the odd request was soon answered:

Dick is in an assisted living facility near Atlanta but I don't have any specifics. Will try to get contact info and will ask someone who probably knows by email this afternoon. - Nick

The contact in Georgia turned out to be Jim Howard, a mutual friend of both Deneke and Weedman who had lived in Kenmure for over 25 years before moving to Alpharetta, GA. Jim and Dick were golfing and poker buddies and they were still in contact with one another. Jim replied with a short email:

Talked to Dick (age 99 at last birthday) and thinks it may be a Colorado School of Mines class ring. He's at Park Springs in Stone Mountain. Best solution is to have the finder contact Dick by phone.

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Two weeks after D-day, Dick and his unit followed the initial invasion forces into France. His first assignment there was to operate a quarry that provided crushed rock to help maintain roads for the invasion forces. Dick remembers a lot of cold and rain during those initial weeks in France. “It just kept raining,” he recalls. “The mud was so bad they used tanks to pull trucks out of the mud.”

As the army offensive progressed, Dick and his unit worked to keep roads clear, build field hospitals, and build a lot of Nissen huts - prefabricated sheet metal structures used for a variety of purposes including housing, storage, and offices. Much of the physical work was performed by German prisoners under the supervision of Dick and his unit.

By mid-1945 the war in Europe was winding down and Dick received new orders to ship out to the Philippines to assist with the war effort in the Pacific. The timing of his reassignment, however, turned out to be fortuitous. Dick was on a ship somewhere between Panama and the Philippines when word was received that the atom bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered shortly thereafter and the war, for all intents and purposes, was over for Dick. “That bomb saved my ass,” he says.

Following his discharge from the army, Deneke joined the US Gypsum Company in 1946. He worked as a manufacturing engineer and one of his first assignments was to help with the construction of a new plant in Sigurd, Utah. While in Utah, Dick met and married a pretty young lady from a prominent Mormon family in Richfield, UT which was just a few miles from the construction project in Sigurd. Dick and his new bride, Clyda, were married on August 6th, 1949, and bought a home in Richfield where they started their new life together.

It was during his time in Richfield that Dick lost his class ring. The ring would work its way into the soil of Utah and remain undiscovered for the next 70 years.

The young couple was soon on the move, however, and ended up moving away from Richfield in 1951 as Dick’s career with US Gypsum progressed - first to Chicago, then San Diego, CA, and then yet another transfer to Lewiston, Montana in 1953.

Sadly, the Deneke’s happiness was to be tragically short-lived. In January 1955 Clyda died as a result of complications from a pregnancy. Clyda King Denke was just 26 years old. Dick was a widower at age 33.

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Two years after Clyda’s death, Kelly Stewart was born in the small town of Austin, Utah just south of Richfield. At age 15, the young Kelly developed an interest in metal detecting, and in that very first year of his new hobby, he discovered a class ring from 1933. The excitement of that find helped cement what was to become a life-long passion.

As a young adult, Kelly moved to Richfield and lived there his entire adult life. Throughout the intervening years, he has continued to pursue his passion for metal detecting and has uncovered thousands of metal objects including coins, children’s toys, tools, farming equipment, and … rings. In fact, over the course of 50 years, he’s found and returned 4 wedding rings and 4 class rings.

Kelly Steward with the ring in Richfield, Utah.

In 2019, a friend of Kelly’s purchased an abandoned home on North Street in Richfield. Kelly asked for and received permission to scan the yard around the house with his metal detectors. His first four trips to the property yielded a few items of interest but nothing out of the ordinary. On a fifth trip to the old house, however, Kelly opted to use a different detector and his decision proved to be propitious. As he swept his detector under a lilac bush in front of the house, his machine alerted him to the presence of gold.

Kelly started digging and about 4 inches below the surface, Kelly pulled out a gold ring encrusted in dirt and mud. “I pulled it out and I started whooping and hollering!” Gold does not tarnish and the ring came out gleaming in the Utah sun. After being cleaned up, the ring identified the original owner as a graduate of the Colorado School of Mines. With further cleaning, Kelly could read the inscription inside of the ring band. Three letters were carved into the gold: R.W.D.

As it turned out, Kelly’s unusual find would then lead him on a three-year odyssey in an effort to find the ring’s owner.

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Dick’s family tragedy left him devastated but his career with US Gypsum continued and took him across the country on a wide variety of corporate assignments. The arc of his career included serving as a Plant Manager, then Manufacturing Manager of the Southern Division consisting of ten plants from Virginia to Texas, and finally Vice President of Manufacturing.

In the late 1950’s, Dick traveled to Hawaii and met Karin, a native of Sweden who was working for the passenger shipping line, Swedish American Line. They were married six months later. During their 50+ years of marriage, they lived in California, Illinois, and Georgia while raising two daughters.

When Dick retired in 1987, he and Karin considered retirement options and initially contemplated living at the beach. During a visit with friends at the coast, however, an unfortunate encounter with a voracious swarm of “no-see-ums” dissuaded Karin from beach life and the couple took the advice of other friends who recommended moving to the mountains of western North Carolina. This change of plans led them to the relatively new golf course community of Kenmure in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

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Yearbook and ring from the Class of 1943, Colorado School of Mines

After Kelly found the ring, he contacted the Colorado School of Mines and they helped him narrow his search for a 1943 graduate with the initials R.W.D. - Richard William Deneke. Kelly’s wife, Elvie, also found a copy of the 1943 yearbook and Kelly was finally able to put a face with the initials on the ring.

Further investigation revealed an online obituary for Karin Deneke who died in 2014 at the age of 91. The names of the Deneke’s two daughters were listed in the obituary and Kelly reached out to both of them via Facebook but received no replies. The trail went cold and two years went by without a connection to anyone in the Deneke family.

The story may have ended there, but in 2021 Kelly posted about some of his all-time favorite finds on a Facebook Group page called Metal Detecting Unlimited.

My #2 favorite find is this beautiful 10k class ring for the Colorado School of mines class of 1943. The librarian at the school told me that there was only one person in the yearbook with the initials RWD , but he was only a junior in 43. She said that because it was during WWII that if he was an exceptional student he may have been graduated a year early? Richard W. Deneke went on to become vice president of the southern division of U.S. Gypsum Corporation. There is a U.S. Gypsum plant 7 miles from where I live so maybe he came here at one time early on and worked? Or he never was here and that is why I got no reply?

Fellow group member, Rebekah, saw the post and, being from North Carolina, was immediately intrigued. Rebekah also found Karin’s obituary and thought that the reference to the Village of Flat Rock might hold the key to finding Richard Deneke or his family. “I retired after a career in the USAF and developed a knack for basic research and coordination. Knowing Flat Rock was a small town, I did another online search for Flat Rock news publications and found Flat Rock Together.”

Rebekah typed out her unusual request in a message to Flat Rock Together and hit send.

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Dick and Karin lived happily in Kenmure for 20 years. Friends Tom and Helen Aschenbrener still live in Kenmure and have fond memories of the couple. Dick and Tom traded stock tips and played cards together. Helen remembers Karin as being very funny and a wonderful storyteller with her Swedish accent. She was an active volunteer at Pardee Hospital for many years.

Dick was also active with the Community Foundation of Henderson County and served on the board for several years. He was also a key member of their Investment Committee. McCray Benson, President/CEO of CFHC, is still in touch with Dick. “Dick has great insights into the financial world and related conditions and his community spirit is still felt within our community.”

In 2007, after a happy 20 years, Dick and Karin left Flat Rock and moved to the Park Springs Retirement Community in Stone Mountain Georgia. Karin’s death in 2014 left a hole in Dick’s heart, but also an important clue to finding him eight years later.

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Richard Deneke wearing the ring and looking at the yearbook returned to him by Kelly Stewart

Using the telephone number provided by Jim Howard and relayed to him by Flat Rock Together, Kelly Stewart called Dick to confirm that he was indeed the R.W.D. inscribed on the inside of the ring band. Their conversation was filmed by a local Utah television station and Kelly agreed to mail the ring and the yearbook to Dick - reuniting him with his class ring approximately 70 years after it was lost.

Local news outlets in Utah picked up on the story and Kelly and Dick soon became minor celebrities when news outlets around the country started to re-publish the improbable story of a 99-year-old man being reunited with a ring after 70 years. In fact, by the time Kelly went to the Richfield post office to mail the ring to Georgia, the postmaster asked, “Is this that ring you found?”

As fate would have it, Kelly’s find led to several more discoveries. A long-lost friend now living in Montana saw the story and reached out to reconnect with Dick. “She remembered me and she sent me the article that showed up in her local paper,” explains Dick. “I would visit one of our plants was in Virginia. She was the daughter of the manager. She was 10 or 12 years old at the time and it was 40 years ago the last time I visited that plant.”

Dick also heard from two long-lost nieces from Montana and Colorado from his first marriage. Ultimately, Dick Deneke was not only reconnected with his ring but reconnected with a number of people from his past. Kelly also made an interesting connection as a result of his find. He learned that his friend’s wife’s mother was Dick’s sister-in-law from his first marriage.

When I talked to Dick recently he mentioned that he was wearing the ring even as we chatted. On March 4th of this year (2022) Dick Deneke will turn 100 years old. And, for the first time in seven decades, he will celebrate his birthday while wearing a ring that he never thought he’d see again - a happy story made possible by a long chain of interested strangers determined to find a lost ring’s rightful owner.

Watch KSL-TV’s interview with Kelly Stewart here.