Builder Makes Ring a Present

Company Demolishing Washington-Lee Pays for Grad's Gift

A construction company building the new Washington-Lee High School has offered to pay for a class ring for a graduate from the Class of '28 whose family couldn't afford to buy her one the year before the Great Depression began.

Mary Allen Hood, now 97 and living in Florida, recently rang up her alma mater in Arlington County and asked whether it was too late to order one -- 79 years after graduation.

Hess Construction Co., which has a contract to demolish Hood's old school and build a replacement, read a story about Hood's desire for a class ring all these years later and contacted her in Pompano Beach.

"When we read about her, we thought, 'My gosh, not only did she not get a ring, now we're demolishing her school, too,' " said Kathleen Langan, senior vice president of the Gaithersburg-based construction company. "We're going to build a better school, but we thought the least we could do is get her the ring. It seemed like the right thing to do."

The ring, being made specially for Hood by ring company National Quality Products, cost $513.04. Hood has paid for it; she said she thinks she put it on her credit card. Hess plans to reimburse her.

"I was very surprised," said Hood, whose quest for a class ring was featured in The Washington Post. "People don't do things like that these days."

She said, though, that "all I keep thinking about is what can I do to repay them? I'm not used to getting something for nothing." Langan said Hood needs to do "absolutely nothing," beyond just enjoying the ring.

Hood, a longtime Washingtonian who moved to Florida seven years ago, startled school officials when she called them about a ring. Ever since her mother told her the family didn't have the money to buy one, she's wanted it, she told them, and she thought time was running out.

Making the ring hasn't been easy, and it's involved some lucky twists.

No one at the school or the ring company knew what a ring from that year looked like. But a teaching assistant there thought to ask senior Ryan Harrison, whose great-grandfather attended the school in the 1930s.

It turned out Harrison's family had recently found a 1937 W-L class ring that belonged to a friend of his great-grandfather's, who had willed it to him. Like Hood, Harrison's great-grandfather had also pined for a class ring his family couldn't afford, and his high school friend knew that. The company used that ring as a model to make Hood's ring.

Hood said she hoped Hess Construction would not "change too much about the school. I want it just the way it was."

When told about the $87 million construction project to build a more modern facility, Hood said:

"Good grief, I can't say I like that that much. But time does change things."