Man playing Santa Claus finds long lost ring and returns to veteran

Every classification is special, but a US Naval Academy classification is something that only our country’s elite will ever have the right to wear.

David Lorenzo, Class of 1964, flew numerous combat missions while serving in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The veteran Marine Corps fighter pilot was even wearing his Naval Academy ring when his F-8 Crusader was hit by enemy fire, forcing him to fly over Laos in January 1968. A few hours later he was rescued by American troops.

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

“He survived the battle, but my golf game did not,” says 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 where Lorenzo lost it 54 years ago. Michael Zenert was near the fourth green at Uniontown Country Club near Pittsburgh when he found the ring in a patch of clay exposed by recent rain showers.

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

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 Tuesday’s Blue Angels exercises and Wednesday’s autograph sessions with the U.S. Navy’s elite flight demonstration team.

“Let’s see if it still fits,” Zenert said after presenting Lorenzo with the ring in the presence 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, bought him a new one years later, identical to the ring he lost. It’s up to him now. But Lorenzo also tried to put on his old ring. It was so long ago.

“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 weighed 60 kilos soaking wet at the time and had a 70 cm waist,” Lorenzo said. “That’s about 50 pounds and 10 inches” difference from today.

Zenert and his wife Carol live near Pittsburgh, but he was able to track Lorenzo down online after finding a podcast in which Lorenzo talked about his military experiences.

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

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

Zenert presented Lorenzo with the class ring for 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 to have guns as its primary weapon.

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

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

Watching the two men talk across the cockpit were their wives, Cathy Lorenzo and Carol Zenert, and a host of museum officials and volunteers, including retired U.S. Navy Captain Sterling Gilliam, director of the National Naval Aviation Museum, and retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Kyle Cozad, president and CEO of the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. Also there was Lorenzo’s longtime girlfriend Debbie Naylor, a museum volunteer and former Delta Airlines flight attendant who has known him since the first Nixon term.

Lorenzo started flying for Delta after serving heroically in 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 called him ‘the Encyclopedia’ because he just knew everything. Now I call him ‘Mr. Google’ because the young people now no longer know what an encyclopedia is.”