Lost Ring of Brigadier General Perry ’31 Discovered

John Wallace III, a recent transplant from Seattle, spotted a treasure when he was raking yard debris Sunday afternoon at his new house. His finds are a family joke as he has a habit of unearthing a rusted nail or other junk and displaying it as a "treasure" to his wife, Heidi. This time, though, he struck gold, quite literally. Wallace spied a band of metal shining up from dark dirt near the front of his brick house as he raked. It was the back of a ring. When he pulled it out and cleaned it, he found a gold-and-jade ring. From the inscription, he knew it belonged to a 1931 graduate of West Point, the U.S. Military Academy. Part of a name “Miller Osborne” was visible on the inside of the band with the last name worn away. “Gold doesn’t corrode. It was as shiny as the day it fell in there,” Wallace said. The Wallaces, who have two young children, purchased the Walnut Heights house in June. It had only one previous owner – a retired Army general and his wife – who built the house in 1963. The late Miller Osborne Perry was a retired brigadier general who had a post-Army career at Michigan State University. He lost the ring about 35 to 40 years ago while doing yard work, reports his daughter, Susie Perry, who lives in Missouri. The general died in 2010 at the age of 102. Back then, he was so upset at losing his West Point ring he tried to track down the lawn clippings bags that had been picked up with the garbage, his daughter recalled. He scoured the yard but couldn’t find it. Susie Perry remembers scattering mulch in recent years in the very area where Wallace spotted the ring. Read More