[Editor's note: Sgt. 1st Class Norman Haner, who retired in March, wrote this message of gratitude and sent it to Army Times to share with fellow soldiers and veterans.]
I want to share an amazing story. I just retired March 1 from the U.S. Army after 24 years and nine months of service in Army Aviation. I am a veteran of Desert Storm, Somalia, Bosnia, and Operation Iraqi Freedom-1, and this story starts shortly after Desert Storm. I was a young private just back from Southwest Asia where I had been attached to the 101st Aviation Brigade.
Proud of my service and the fact that I was now a wartime vet, I had a ring made to display my service. The Army service ring had "U.S. Army Aviation" circling the birthstone in the crown, my last name and "Desert Storm" on one side and the Department of Defense emblem on the other. I also had my initials and last four inscribed inside the ring.
Norman K. Haner's ring
Photo Credit: Courtesy Norman K. Haner'
In 1993, shortly after my return from Somalia, I PCS'd from Germany to Fort Lewis [Washington state] where I stayed until February 1995 when I went back to Germany. Being Aviation and working on aircraft, I rarely wore the ring and it was at Fort Lewis between 1993 and 1995 that I last remember seeing it.
On March 25, three weeks after I retired, I received a Facebook message from a Sais Singh asking if a ring that had been found at his workplace was mine. I almost deleted the message without looking but something made me open the attached pictures and I found myself looking at a ring I had not seen in over 20 years. Sais Singh is a veteran also, and his general manager had given him the ring from a collection of lost jewelry and asked him to see if he could find the owner from the information on the ring.
Sais used my name and Army Aviation to do a search of Facebook and found me in under five minutes. Sais shipped the ring to me at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where I am waiting for two of my children to graduate high school next month. I don't know if I will ever learn how my ring ended up in an industrial laundry facility in Seattle, Washington, 20 years after I had lost it.
I want to say thank you to Hospital Central Services Association, General Manager Dan Jones and Sais Singh for taking the time from their busy schedules to search and return property to this old soldier.
This is people taking care of people, and I wish there were more stories out there of this happening.
Bio: Haner's Army career was spent in MOSs 15N Avionics Mechanic; 15J Aircraft Armament/Electronic/Avionic Systems Repairer; and 15E Unmanned Arial Vehicle Maintainer. He retired at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where he was a platoon sergeant and first sergeant for MOS-T UAV students and UAV instructor for the 15E UAV Maintainer Course.
