Brian Fogg of Brewer has swept his metal detector over parks, beaches and farm land in Maine over the last 50 years and has made some unusual finds, such as a large one-cent piece from 1801, a silver dollar, and coins from Cuba and France.
It wasn’t until over a week ago, however, that he found something of significant value at Broadway Park in Bangor, which prompted the metal-detecting protocol of turning over the item to local police if the owner couldn’t be found.
But Fogg was able to identify the owner because his name was inscribed inside the item, a ring given to former University of Maine basketball star Skip Chappelle from his hometown of Old Town after he was named a first-team All-American in 1961 after his junior season.
On the outside, the ring also had “University of Maine” and “All-American” inscribed on it.
“I was happy to see a name in there. I knew I could find him through you [the BDN] or the university to get his ring back to him,” Fogg said.
Fogg returned the ring to Chappelle on Thursday when they met at Broadway Park. Chappelle said he and his wife were excited to hear the ring had been found when Fogg contacted him on Wednesday. The ring and many other possessions were stolen when they were victims of a home invasion at their Veazie residence about 18 months ago.
“The ring, in the whole scheme of things, was one of the main things we really cherished,” said the 76-year-old Chappelle, explaining the ring provides a bond to his college teammates and what he describes as a special era of UMaine basketball, a program he went on to coach from 1971 to 1988.
The Chappelles were in their home sleeping at the time of the robbery and he said several other homes in the Bangor area were hit by the same robbers, who were eventually caught and prosecuted.
Some items have been returned to the Chappelles and they are receiving a small quarterly sum of restitution, but Chappelle’s preference was always the ring’s return.
“They asked me to place a value on it, but my point to get across to these kids was please get my ring back and forget about restitution,” he said, adding that he believes the robbers may have discarded the ring in panic or because of its identifying features.
Several circumstances fell into place that led Fogg, whose passion is detecting for relics, to finding the ring. He is 66 and recently retired after a 44-year career with the Maine Department of Transportation, but still works part time at his massage therapy business at Stillwater Professional Park, which is a few miles from Broadway Park. On Nov. 9, he had a little extra time and said the warm day and damp soil enabled ideal conditions for metal detecting because conductivity increases.
“I do [the detecting] mostly for recreation. It’s a way of unwinding and it’s nice to be out there when the weather is nice,” he said.
He was going to check out the areas near the swings and slides but didn’t do so because several children were playing, so he detected the areas around the walking paths until picking up a signal embedded four inches into the ground.
“I could tell it was a ring because of its size and the strength of the signal,” he said.
He then cut out a circle of sod around the ring, removed the sod — which he later returned — and used a smaller device to pinpoint the ring so he could get it without damaging it. A woman was watching him work and when he cleaned the dirt off the ring, they both read and confirmed Chappelle’s name inside the ring.
“It’s in excellent shape,” Fogg said.
Chappelle said it’s an incredible gesture by Fogg to return the ring.
“It says a lot about Mainers and how we operate,” he said.
