Vietnam vet has long lost Naval Academy ring returned by man who found it on a golf course

10/30/2024 05:00 PM

Any class ring is special, but a U.S. Naval Academy class ring is something that only the elite in our country will ever earn the right to wear.

David Lorenzo, Class of 1964, had his ring on through numerous combat missions while serving in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The veteran Marine Corps fighter pilot even had his Naval Academy ring on when his F-8 Crusader was hit by enemy fire forcing him to eject over Laos in January 1968 − he was rescued a few hours later by U.S. forces.

He would eventually return to the United States, and about six years after graduation, golfing with his father in Pennsylvania, he lost the prized ring somewhere on the course.

“It survived combat, but it couldn’t survive my golf game,” said Lorenzo, a sturdy and tough-looking 82-year-old.

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

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

On Friday, Zenert returned the ring to Lorenzo at the National Naval Aviation Museum at Naval Air Station Pensacola, where Lorenzo is a volunteer and also the narrator for the Tuesday Blue Angels practices and Wednesday autograph sessions with the U.S. Navy’s elite flight demonstration team.

“Let’s see if it still fits,” Zenert said after handing Lorenzo the ring in front of family members, friends and museum staff.

“I never thought I would see it again,” Lorenzo said. “It was very sad when I lost it, and this means a lot.” Lorenzo’s wife, Cathy, purchased him a new one years later, identical to the ring he lost. It’s on his hand now. But Lorenzo tried to put his old ring on as well. It had been so long.

“Does it fit?” Zenert asked.

“Very close,” Lorenzo said, holding up his hand. “I can get it to the first knuckle.”

He’s bigger now. Wiser and older too.

“I was 145 pounds soaking wet back then with a 28-inch waist,” Lorenzo said. “That’s about 50 pounds and 10 inches” difference from the present.”

Zenert and his wife, Carol, live near Pittsburgh, but he was able to track Lorenzo down through the internet after finding a podcast where Lorenzo talked about his military experiences.

“I just knew I couldn’t send this in the mail,” Zenert said of the ring. “I knew it had to be personally delivered.”

So, after a trip to Orlando to see his son, the couple drove to Pensacola, arriving Thursday night and meeting with the Lorenzos Friday at the museum.

Zenert presented Lorenzo the class ring in front of an F-8 Crusader on display, similar to the one Lorenzo flew in combat. The supersonic fighter jet is known as the “Last of the Gunfighters” because it was the last fighter jet with guns as its primary weapons.

Soon, with a Santa hat he had brought with him to take Christmas photos at the museum, the gray-bearded Zenert was in the cockpit, with Lorenzo on the side of the jet showing the cockpit’s features to him. Zenert’s face was covered with a Santa-sized smile.

“This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve always loved planes and this place is fantastic. I think I’m having an overload, it’s that cool.”

Watching the two men talk over the cockpit were their wives, Cathy Lorenzo and Carol Zenert, and a host of Museum officials and volunteers, including retired U.S. Navy Capt. Sterling Gilliam, National Naval Aviation Museum director, and retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. 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 has known him since the first Nixon term.

Lorenzo went to fly for Delta after heroically serving with the Marine Corps for six years and the two met there. He retired from Delta in 2002.

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