A White Township pensioner experienced an emotional reconnection with his past this week after a sewer maintenance team found his long-lost wedding ring.
Merle Stilwell, a retired Indiana University of Pennsylvania math professor and football coach, had lost the ring down a drain at his home years ago. It was the wedding ring he had worn since his marriage to his wife Eleanor on August 19, 1955 – until it disappeared down the plumbing of their home on Shady Drive in the Shadowood neighborhood, where the Stilwell family had lived since 1967.
Since the loss of the ring, the Stilwells’ lives have changed.
First, Merle bought and wore a replacement for his wedding ring.
Later, Merle and his wife moved to St. Andrew’s Village. Eleanor passed away on July 18, 2018 and Merle now resides at Village House, St Andrew’s personal care unit.
What hadn’t changed over the years was the resting place of the wedding band, apparently trapped among the rubble in a slight dip in the sewerage system just outside the Stilwells’ former home.
It was discovered by a community crew during routine maintenance in late October.
Exactly how long the ring was there is a detail that time has stolen from Merle’s memory.
“Can you imagine how amazing it seems to me? It’s amazing,” Stilwell said as he slipped the ring onto his finger. “I’m just grateful. Really grateful.”
Rather than being washed down pipes for miles and lost forever in the sewage system, the luster of the ring caught the eye of Jack Turner of the White Township sewage team during a regular pipeline cleanup project.
Turner and his colleague Mike Cadile had teamed up to jet wash the pipeline and collect debris, which was washed into a pit accessible through a manhole. A camera inspection should follow.
“I must have shoveled two buckets full of debris out of that section,” Turner said. “We always find rings, costume jewellery, out of the ranks, but none were like this, a wedding ring.”
The ring was secured in the White Church maintenance shop because it didn’t provide much clue as to its origin. Two sets of initials – ESS and MES – and the wedding date have been engraved on the inside.
Bob Ream, the long-time official at the township sewerage authority, did some research and compared the initials to property records for the three properties served by the sewer.
He provided the link between the former homeowner of 102 Shady Drive, Merle Stilwell, and the initials MES.
White Township road crew foreman Tim Willis contacted his high school classmate Doug Stilwell to ask if it could be one of his parents’ rings.
Doug presented the ring to his father Thursday at St. Andrew’s Village.
It paired perfectly with the spare ring that Merle Stilwell still wears four years after Eleanor’s death.
“It touches me deeply,” Stilwell said, tears in his eyes. “I tend to get emotional. It’s so hard for me to believe. How could that happen? I’m thankfull.”
Merle Stilwell, 90, a Korean War-era Army veteran, met and married Eleanor when they were students at Mansfield University. Her newlywed travels took her to Long Island, NY where Doug and their daughter Wendy were born. The family moved to Indiana when Merle Stilwell was hired at IUP.
“I worked with student teachers and it was fun. I knew how to teach and I was so grateful to have the opportunity to work with young people who also wanted to teach,” Stilwell said. “I loved athletics and I loved coaching. I was so lucky that I really enjoyed everything I got to do.”
Stilwell has long been a fixture in sports and athletics programs: assistant on the IUP football staff, coach of the Lions Club’s Senior Legion youth baseball team, accomplished golfer and tournament organizer for VFW Country Club on Indian Springs Road.
Today, Stilwell spends much of his time in social activities at the St Andrew’s Village complex, not far from the former VFW course. Without much prompting, he sings the parts he sang in The Sprucemen, a popular Indiana barbershop quartet of the 1970s and ’80s with Keith Bloom, Frank Kinter Sr. and Hallie Willison.
“I always think I don’t really have a lot of free time here,” Stilwell said. “I’m very, very busy.”
He becomes friends with the other residents and welcomes visits from his family, IUP colleagues, longtime church friends, and others in the community. His children and their families live out of town—Doug and his wife Deborah in Oakmont, and Wendy Boehme and her husband Les in Murfreesboro, Tennessee—but his connection to the Indiana community endures.
“My connection to Grace United Methodist Church was really strong. I really appreciated that, I really appreciated going to the choir rehearsal and taking part. I ask myself: “What do I do when I stop?”
Merle Stilwell’s salvaged wedding ring is sure to be a topic of conversation for a long time to come.
“How about I wear them both? I’ll feel more comfortable knowing I have both,” he said.
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