RALEIGH, N.C.—Thomas Wray Kidd is being reunited in North Carolina with a piece of jewelry and a part of his past he thought was gone forever.

It is his Class of 1962 ring, gold with a red gemstone, from Jackson High School in Jackson, North Carolina.

Kidd, now 67 and retired, has not seen the ring since he gave it to his girlfriend in nearby Roanoke Rapids half a century ago, and she accidentally dropped it into her toilet mid-flush.

The girlfriend, Dianne Shearin, was aghast. Her father had a plumber pull the toilet and snake the pipes. “The plumber finally told them, ‘Hey, that ring is gone,”’ Kidd recalled in an interview.

It was not gone for good. When a storm pipe collapsed in Roanoke Rapids recently and a repair crew responded, a foreman named Dwayne Johnson found the long lost ring. It was just a few blocks from where it had gone into the sewer in 1960.

Johnson took the ring to a local jewelry store, where jeweler Steve Brantley spent three hours cleaning it back to a bright gold.

The ring bore the initials TWK. With Johnson’s consent, a hunt began to find the owner. There weren’t many possibilities. Only 25 students graduated from Jackson High in 1962, a few years before the school closed.

In the city of High Point, Kidd got a call from a former classmate who told him about the ring. Then Brantley called, offering to mail it or deliver it personally when he visited family in High Point.

“He said, ‘Just wait and bring it to me,’ which I’m glad he did because I want to see the look on his face when he’s reunited with his ring after 51 years,” Brantley told Reuters.

Kidd is impressed with Johnson’s honesty in getting the ring back to its owner. He is also happy he will once more be able to give it to the woman he calls his “soul mate and best friend.”

Despite the toilet mishap, Kidd married Dianne Shearin in 1964. They’re still married today.