This Veterans Day is a very memorable one for a Bay area veteran.
After nearly 50 years, retired Lt. Col. Rolfe Arnhym has been reunited with the class ring he lost while at war.
"I'm still in shock," he said. "I really truly am. I just had no idea I would ever see it again."
Arnhym, 85, said the stone fell out of his West Point ring while he was fighting in Vietnam in 1966.
"Something made me look down at my ring, I don't know what - and I noticed that the stone was gone," Arnhym said.
Arnhym found the stone and while on leave, he took it to be repaired. Arnhym said the jeweler was hostile about the war. The jeweler told Arnhym he'd mail the ring back.
Arnhym never received it, but a stranger in Missouri did.
"I figured the man who owned the ring had probably gotten killed in Vietnam about the same time my husband did," said Ruth Pendergraft.
Her husband, Sgt. Darrel Heatherly, was killed in Vietnam in 1967. Heatherly and Arnhym never met.
When Heatherly died, the military sent his widow all of his belongings, but it also included Arnhym's class ring.
"I think he won it in a poker game," Pendergraft said. "He played a lot of poker."
Pendergraft didn't think much of it at the time. She stored the ring away until last year.
"I got it out and laid it on the counter and I thought, 'Now, what am I going to do with that?' " Pendergraft said.
She had a jeweler check it out, and they noticed the inscription inside.
"I said, 'Now I have to find out who owns this ring,' " Pendergraft said.
With the help of West Point, she did.
And although Arnhym got a replacement ring, there's nothing like having the original.
"Quite honestly, I'd given up on it," Arnhym said.
Now, after being gone for nearly 50 years, Arnhym has his treasure back and he's made a new friend.
He said the West Point ring finally brings closure to the Vietnam War.