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Blog 495 – 12.15.2015
The Ring Maker

Forty eight years ago I was an eighteen year old soldier boy in Basic Training. In a couple of months I would leave Fort Campbell, Kentucky for my Advanced Individual Training at the Signal School at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Like most soldier boys I had a girl back home that I hoped would wait for me and marry me. In fact I was saving a little out of my check each month to buy her a little diamond engagement and wedding ring set. While at Fort Gordon I met another young soldier from Baltimore, Maryland who also planned to marry his sweetheart after his training and before his overseas assignment. He was making a ring for his girl out of a solid silver quarter (1964 was the last year they made them, since then they have been copper with silver cladding.) It got my attention and everyone else’s in the barracks because he was beating on the edge of the quarter with a spoon and it made a terrific racket. The guys asked him to take his ring making outside and I went with him because I wanted to watch and learn how to make a ring out of a quarter. He was happy to teach me. I found a silver quarter and started tapping along with my new buddy and teacher.

He explained that you turn and tap, turn and tap, and that the relatively soft silver mushrooms over at the tapped edge and that the letters on the outside edges of the quarter roll over on the underside of the mushroom. If you carefully remove the center when you get it down to ring finger size the lettering will be on the inside of the ring making it a novel gift. If you take out the lettering no one would ever believe you made the ring from a quarter. When the rings were down to the size of our girl friends fingers we took them to the serviceman’s recreation center on base where they had tools for craft making and borrowed their drills, files, and cutting tools to carefully remove the centers of our rings leaving the lettering untouched. We each mailed the rings off to our sweethearts hoping they would wear them forever as tokens of our love for them, pounds and pounds of it. Sorry, I could not resist the pun.

That was the first ring I ever made. Having made one for the young girl that would be my first wife I thought I would make one for my first love, my Mom. Then out of a 1964 Kennedy Half Dollar, the only year they were solid silver, I made a ring for my Dad. Dad wore his for over twenty years as a wedding band and when he passed it came back to me. I gave it to my oldest step-son David to use as a weeding ring in his second marriage and I also made one out of a quarter for his new bride Tabatha. When David passed last Spring I asked if I could have it back since I had made it for my dad and now two people that I loved very much had worn it. I intended to keep it and leave it to my son Jonathan when I pass. I had made him one as a boy but was sure it no longer fit. I have mailed Dad’s ring to Jon in a Christmas card for a remembrance of his grandpa and a brother he never knew. Just after I made the half dollar ring for Dad I also made one for my brother. My first marriage did not last and she gave back the diamond ring set but kept the quarter ring. I traded the small diamond engagement ring set in on a larger more expensive set for my second wife, Linda Gail. We were married three and a half years and I had barely started a quarter ring for her when we parted. I finished that ring later for a wedding band for my third wife, Sandra, she liked silver better than gold. After our divorce she gave it to our daughter Emily and it came back to her when Emily passed. My fourth wife Linda Lee, has reminded me for over twenty five years that I never made her a ring. I remedied that this Christmas. A card with a ring made especially for her from a 1950 quarter, her birth year, is on the way to her also in a Christmas card. I can hear her saying when she reads this, ” You never can surprise anyone can you?” Well as Gomer Pyle said, “Surprise, surprise.”

I want to be clear on one thing about my ring making. I am not the Dark Lord of the Rings, and there is not one ring that means more than the others to rule them all. I loved everyone I ever made a ring for or to whom I ever gave one. And I have in my life loved far more people than the rings I have made and I have made more than a few rings. I no longer believe that love is on a sliding scale or that we love or are loved in degrees. Many people by their love or by letting me love them have taught me that there is only one way to love. In the two new commandments that Jesus gave that he said fulfilled all the Law and The Prophets he’s says to: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as you love yourself.” But how much and to what degree are we to love our neighbor and ourself? From the context I think the answer Jesus gave is quite clear – there is only one way to love and that is with all the stops pulled out – with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Anything less than that is just not good enough.

I wish I could present each and everyone of you with a ring of love like the Prodigal son’s daddy called for with a robe when his boy came home. It was a symbol that that young man was still what he had always been, a beloved son, child of his father. Seniors don’t forget to pick up your rings.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

Former ring maker but forever ring bearer,

David White