Man playing Santa finds long-lost ring and returns to veteran

Any class ring is special, but the United States Naval Academy class ring is something that only the elite in our country will get the right to wear.

David Lorenzo, Class of 1964, flew numerous combat missions while serving in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The veteran Marine Corps fighter pilot was even wearing his Naval Academy ring when his F-8 Crusader was shot down by enemy fire, forcing him to eject over Laos in January 1968 – only to be rescued by U.S. troops hours later.

He eventually returned to the United States and about six years after graduation, while playing golf with his father in Pennsylvania, he lost a valuable ring somewhere on the course.

“He survived the fight, but he couldn’t survive my golf game,” said Lorenzo, a strong, rugged-looking 82-year-old.

Now Lorenzo and that ring are reunited thanks to a Pennsylvania man who found the ring this summer on the same golf course where Lorenzo lost the ring 54 years ago. Michael Zehnert was near the fourth green at Uniontown Country Club near Pittsburgh when he found the ring in a clay patch exposed by recent rains.

“I saw this shiny thing and thought it was a beer can,” Sehnert, 70, said. “I dug it up so no one would step on it, and I saw that it was a ring.” He cleaned it and saw that it was a United States Naval Academy class of 1964 ring with Lorenzo’s name engraved on the inside.

Sehnert returned Lorenzo’s ring Friday at the National Museum of Naval Aviation at Naval Air Station Pensacola, where Lorenzo is a volunteer and a narrator at Blue Angels training Tuesday and autograph sessions Wednesday with the U.S. Navy’s elite demonstration team.

“Let’s see if it still fits,” Sehnert said as he presented Lorenzo with the ring in front of family, friends and museum staff.

“I never thought I’d see this again,” Lorenzo said. “It was very sad when I lost him, and it means a lot.” Lorenzo’s wife, Kathy, bought him a new ring a few years later, identical to the ring he had lost. Now it’s on his hand. But Lorenzo tried to put on his old ring too. It’s been so long.

“Is this suitable?” – asked Sehnert.

“Very close,” said Lorenzo, raising his hand. “I can reach the first knuckle.”

He’s bigger now. And wiser and older.

“Back then I weighed 145 pounds through and through and had a 28-inch waist,” Lorenzo said. “That’s about a 50-pound, 10-inch difference from where it is now.”

Sehnert and his wife, Carol, live near Pittsburgh, but he was able to track Lorenzo down online after finding a podcast where Lorenzo talked about his war experiences.

“I just knew I couldn’t mail it,” Sehnert said of the ring. “I knew it had to be delivered in person.”

So, after a trip to Orlando to see their son, the couple drove to Pensacola, arriving Thursday evening and meeting Lorenzo Friday at the museum.

Sehnert presented Lorenzo with a class ring in front of an F-8 Crusader on display similar to the one Lorenzo flew in combat. The supersonic fighter is known as the “Last of the Gunslingers” because it was the last fighter to use cannons as its primary weapon.

Soon a white-bearded Sehnert was in the cockpit wearing the Santa hat he had brought with him to take Christmas photos at the museum, while Lorenzo was on board the plane showing him the features of the cockpit. Santa’s smile lit up Sehnert’s face.

“This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve always loved airplanes and this place is fantastic. I feel like I’m on overload, it’s so great.”

The two men’s conversation was watched from the cockpit by their wives, Kathy Lorenzo and Carol Sehnert, as well as a host of museum staff and volunteers, including retired U.S. Navy Capt. Sterling Gilliam, director of the National Museum of Naval Aviation, and retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Kyle. Cozad, President and CEO of the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. Also there was Lorenzo’s longtime friend Debbie Naylor, a museum volunteer and longtime Delta Airlines flight attendant who had known him since Nixon’s first term.

Lorenzo went to Delta after six years of heroic service in the Marine Corps, and there they met. He left Delta in 2002.

“He’s just an amazing person to have done and achieved what he’s achieved,” Naylor said. “He is so talented and knowledgeable. I called him “Encyclopedia” because he knew everything. Now I call him “Mr.” Google” because young people now don’t know what an encyclopedia is.”