Hobbyist Returns Half Century Old Championship Ring

"When Rebecca Luffman's phone rang at 8 p.m. on Sept. 26, it truly was a call out of the blue.

On the other end of the line was Bill Eggleton. He was calling to say he had something that had long ago belonged to Luffman's father.

The prized possession was a ring awarded to the members of the Memphis Chickasaws baseball team for winning the 1955 Southern Association championship. Kelly Jack Swift, Luffman's father, had pitched for Memphis that season at age 33 — the eighth season of his distinguished 11-season minor league career.

Swift had lost the ring somewhere before dying of kidney disease in 1966. That somewhere turned out to be a ball field in High Point, where he moved with his family from a tobacco farm in Elkin after retiring from baseball."

Read more HERE.

Image Credit: Lauren Carroll / The Winston-Salem Journal