ALBRIGHT — Mike and Anita Peaslee and their family lost a lot in the flood of 1985.
They and their children, ages 1 to 10 at the time, watched helplessly as the Cheat River swept away the home they had moved into in Albright eight years previously. With it, went most of their possessions.
“Our house was one of the last ones to shift off the foundation,” Mike Peaslee recalled recently.
So when a post on Facebook came to his attention March 18, he was shocked.
“Hey guys there’s been a male’s 1974 Kingwood High School class ring found in the streets of Albright and they’re looking to return it to the owner it has the initials MP in it if you know who this might belong to get ahold of Amber Graham and Albright,” posted Renee Wiles-Richardson on the KHS Class of 1974’s Facebook page.
Within hours, some of his classmates from Kingwood High School and Peaslee had concluded it was his ring, lost to the muddy waters of the Cheat 33 years ago.
“When I found out that it had my initials … you want to see an old man break down,” Peaslee said. “I cried. I’d rather have that than $10,000, because we lost so much.”
The gold ring is bent in half, and the black onyx stone is missing, but the initials inside and the name of the school, the year of graduation and items that represent Peaslee’s activities in school are plain.
“A lot of people would have just ignored it,” Peaslee said, let alone try to find the owner. He recalled that, when his gun cabinets were found washed under a mobile home after the flood, someone stole and sold the guns, some of which he was later able to recover.
“There aren’t a lot of people like you,” Peaslee told Amber Graham as he met her for the first time last week.
“I can’t imagine not doing it,” she replied.
Graham was walking to church in Albright when she saw the ring lying at the intersection of Wall and Central streets, near MCR. She picked it up.
“I just figured somebody would want it back,” she said.
Graham has no memories of the flood of 1985 herself — she was born a month after it hit, in December 1985. But it turned out she has a connection to Peaslee. His house was next door to her grandfather’s, before the flood destroyed both homes.
“There really wasn’t much to it,” Graham insisted of returning the ring. “I just picked it up and put it on Facebook, and everybody shares, and found out,” it was Peaslee’s.
“When he said it was lost in the flood, I wasn’t expecting that,” she said.
After learning whose ring it was, Graham dropped it off at the home of one of Peaslee’s sons but met him in person later. Peaslee, the owner of Peaslee’s Service Center, said he was providing her next set of tires.
Graham said that was nice, but she was just glad he got the ring back.
