A flea-market find reunites a family with a long-lost treasure
A flea-market find reunites a family with a long-lost treasure
When Alex Plache '79 picked up a redstoned bauble for $40 at a flea market in eastern Pennsylvania, he knew immediately that it was a Cornell class ring. What he didn't realize was that he had stumbled upon a family heirloom—and a minor mystery. "When I found it, I saw the Cornell 'C' and a '39 inscription," says Plache, senior intellectual property counsel for the building materials company Saint-Gobain. "But I didn't think too much of it." When he looked more closely, he saw that the name Evelyn Zimmerman was engraved inside the band. He decided to do some sleuthing and, with the help of Cornell alumni affairs staff, eventually traced the ring to Evelyn Zimmerman Linowitz, a bacteriology major in the Class of 1939.
The widow of diplomat Sol Linowitz, JD '38, Linowitz is the matriarch of an extended family that boasts numerous Cornellians, including daughters Anne Linowitz Mozersky '65 and Ronni Linowitz Jolles '78. Once Plache found them, he felt a strong obligation to return the ring. "It's even more meaningful because both parents went to Cornell," he says, "The ring clearly had a lot of sentimental value at some point."
But due to Linowitz's ill health, her children have been unable to ascertain how the ring left their mother's possession—or, for that matter, how she got it. "We're excited to have it, but we're mystified, because we don't know the story behind it," says Mozersky, a home childcare consultant in Ottawa, Ontario. The wife and mother of Cornellians (Ken Mozersky, PhD '70, and Judy Mozersky '92), she took possession of the ring during a trip to Philadelphia over Thanksgiving. "All four sisters were together and we looked at it, but none of us recognized it," Mozersky recalls. "My mother only ever wore one ring, and that was her wedding ring."
Adding to the mystery is the fact that the ring is clearly too large to fit Linowitz. Did she buy it as a token of affection for her soon-to-be husband, whom she'd marry a few months after graduation? Did he buy it for himself but have her name inscribed? (That seems unlikely; why would a 1938 Law School grad choose a Class of '39 ring?) To complicate the question, Mozersky points out that her father never wore jewelry on his hands, not even a wedding ring. "It looks like it was a man's ring," she notes, "but it's my mother's name that was engraved inside."
Mozersky hopes that, sooner or later, someone will be able to shed light on the ring's provenance. In the meantime, she and her family are glad to have the long-lost treasure—even though it's too large for any of the sisters. "You could wear it around your neck on a chain," she muses. "I do think it would make a lovely pendant."