Norman Becklund’s 1957 Santa Ana High School was presummably under water in Newport Bay for close to 60 years.

Betheen and Norman Becklund spent many afternoons in Newport Beach.

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Norman Becklund in Newport Beach sometime in the 1950s.

Norman Becklund’s initials inside his 1957 senior class ring was instrumental in returning the jewlery to him almost 60 years after it was lost.

Betheen Becklund wears her husband’s class ring around her neck, much like she did when he gave it to her in 1957.



Norman and Betheen Becklund have been married for 59 years and live in Washington State.

Norman and Betheen Becklund first cemented their status as a couple six decades ago when she started wearing his Santa Ana High School class ring on a chain around her neck.

It was a common gesture for high school sweethearts in the 1950s.

The two grew up across the street from one another in Santa Ana. They were both 17 and seniors when Norman Becklund gave Betheen Sackman the 1957 class ring that had ‘SA Saints’ in gold atop a red stone.

She wore the ring, which cost her boyfriend $14.95, around her neck every day. Until one day, she’s not exactly sure when, that she lost it.

“I can’t bring up the memory, but all I just know is that suddenly it was gone,” said Betheen Becklund, now 77 and living with her husband of almost 60 years in Bellingham, Washington.

They had all but forgotten the lost ring when Betheen got a call earlier this year from someone who said he had found it during a dive in Newport Bay.

Discovering the ring

David Finnern, a Hemet resident who grew up in Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach, has spent the better part of his life searching for shipwrecks and submarine ruins, writing numerous books about his underwater explorations.

Several years ago Finnern took an underwater metal detector with him during a dive into Newport Bay and got a hit.

He scooped up a muddied object and rinsed it off when he got back to his truck.

It was a class ring, with the initials ‘NLB’ inscribed on the inside of the band and ‘SA Saints’ in gold on a red stone. It didn’t appear damaged, Finnern said, which was remarkable considering it had presumably been soaking in salt water for several decades.

“It was in remarkably good condition,” he recalled.

How had a Santa Ana class ring wound up in Newport Bay? he wondered.

Moving on

Betheen, who was born near the Balboa Peninsula, remembers going to Newport Beach after school with friends and Norman, who loved to swim and fish in the area.

At one point, the couple theorized that the chain with the ring might have slipped off Betheen’s neck during a swim.

“We were all over that area,” said Norman, now 78. “For years we thought something has happened to it and we don’t know what. We looked for it in all our stuff but we couldn’t find it and figured we lost it forever.”

After graduating from Santa Ana High, Betheen moved to San Diego with her family and the couple got engaged on Christmas Day in 1957.

They were married the following summer — their 60-year anniversary is next year — and had two children, Brita and Logan.

The Becklunds lived in Orange County for several years before moving to the Pacific Northwest, where Norman still works as a building contractor.

The search



Finnern felt a sense of duty to make an attempt to find the owners of the ring he had found at the bottom of the bay.

First, he called Santa Ana High School, which did not have a list of 1957 graduates or even a class yearbook.

Despite a heavy workload of dives looking for a Confederate submarine and a pair of aircraft that had collided and sunk in the ocean near Newport Beach, Finnern continued to search the internet, looking for the ring’s owners.

Eventually, he gave up.

“I hit kind of a brick wall initially when I was researching it so I put it on the back burner,” Finnern said.

Then he realized that 2017 might be the year to solve the mystery.

“It just popped in my head that it would be the 60th reunion and that I might be able to chase it down that way,” he said.

He found a website for the Santa Ana High’s 1957 class reunion and contacted Katherine Housley, a graduate who was organizing the reunion.

Housley found a name in the class roster, Norman Leroy Becklund, that matched the initials inscribed on the inner portion of the ring.

Now with a possible name, Finnern found a business called Becklund Designs in Washington state and made a call in August.

What’s lost is found

Initially, Betheen was apprehensive when the stranger on the other line began inquiring about a lost class ring.

She and Finnern fielded questions back and forth before he became confident he had found the right person.

He told her what he does for a living and how he came across the gold ring with the red stone in the waters off Newport Beach.

For Betheen, the news was nothing short of amazing.

“We were all like, ‘Wow, this is out of the blue,'” she recalled. “We’re still blown away that it’s been found.”

Earlier this month, the Becklunds received a box from Finnern that contained the ring and a letter explaining his quest to reunite it with the couple.

Now now the ring sits securely in the couple’s bedroom where it will remain, Norman said.

“The years have passed and my hands have gotten bigger,” he joked. “She’ll maybe wear it again.”