City-Poly rivalry and the stately draw of the high school class ring

The day I showed off my brand new high school ring to my grandfather, he took my hand in his and inspected it closely: It had a unique shape and significant heft. It bore an emphatic island of onyx, flowing around the crisp gold image of a stately castle.

“That’s a beautiful ring,” Granddaddy said, releasing my hand. “It’s special. You better never give it to some boy. You might not get it back”

I agreed, but I was a liar, because eventually I did give that exquisite Baltimore City College High School ring to a boy from my class, the Class of ’89. It was more than two decades after I made that promise, and that boy was my husband. And he did, as my grandfather feared, lose it all the same, as it fell off his hand into the change receptacle at a tollboth on the way home from a Miami Dolphins game. Granddaddy knew.

That lost City ring, with its signature representation of the now 94-year-old school building, is on my mind this week as my alma mater celebrates the 133rd City-Poly football game on Friday. Our mostly jovial beef with Baltimore Polytechnic Institute is the third-oldest public high school rivalry in the country and will be played for the first time at Johns Hopkins University.

Along with the 102nd Calvert Hall-Loyola Turkey Bowl, City-Poly is a Baltimore fall tradition. It’s more than a football game — it’s a happening, a pilgrimage, an intricately woven thread in the fabric of this city’s history.

That ring represents all of that.

It doesn’t matter when you graduated — if you see someone wearing one you feel instantly connected to them. When I moved to South Florida and spoke to groups of retirees, I would often have some elderly woman approach me proudly to tell me they used to wear one, gifted by a boyfriend who went to City, some of whom became their husbands.

Just like that, we were family.

“That’s how powerful that ring is,” said Lee Raskin, Class of ’63, who will be attending Friday’s game, ring firmly on his finger, with members of his homeroom class. “It’s a symbol.”

It might seem weird to you guys that aren’t from here. But remember that Baltimore’s a place that when people ask where you went to school, they usually mean high school, not college. And City grads are really, really into it. Not for nothing did Dimitris Spiliadis, a former City classmate (Class of ’87) and the owner of Fells Points’ The Black Olive restaurant, introduce himself to my son by saying, “Your mom and dad and I were part of the same club, of sorts. It’s kind of a cult.”

Well … not really. But it’s not, not a cult. I know that Poly graduates are just as proud of their school and ring, and of their place in this city and in this rivalry. Two of my closest friends went there, and they refer to this tradition, which used to happen at the former Memorial Stadium each Thanksgiving, as the Poly-City game. I respect that. And when a Poly graduate gets a column, they can write it that way. In this column, it’s always going to be City-Poly.

That traditional, substantial ring was designed to fit the boys who were first the exclusive student body from 1939 till 1978, and then sized down for the young women who would come after. Jocelyn Hassanzadeh, Class of ’89, was wearing hers at an event in 1995 when she met fellow City grad and former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Governor William Donald Schaefer.

“He stopped his talk after seeing my ring and was so shocked to see a woman wearing it! We laughed together as I informed him that City opened its doors to women in the ’70s,” she said. “He gave me a huge hug!”

Not everyone got that traditional ring — I knew some girls who wanted something more slender and pretty with a birthstone and ordered them from places like the old Best Products Company department store at Towson Marketplace. My parents didn’t grow up in Baltimore, but they knew something special and historic when they saw it, and told my twin sister Lynne and I that they would only pay for that specific ring with its tiny castle. We’ve never regretted that decision.

And we talk about how our history at City and where it took us in life has allowed us to take that ring around the world. The clerk at a Philadelphia hotel that had lost Lee Raskin’s reservation spotted his ring and revealed that not only was she a City grad, but that the bridal suite was empty for the weekend and was now his, free of charge.

My Class of ’89 classmate Troy Mitchell wore his City ring during his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan while in the U.S. Army. In a photo from that time, you can see the gold and onyx glinting in the desert sun. During Caron LeNoir’s (Class of ’90) last pregnancy, “my hands were swollen from edema, and my ring finger turned purple, and it [her ring] had to be cut off. I tied something around it and wore it on my necklace until I later had it repaired. I wear it with a guard to protect my skin, but it never leaves this hand.”

City’s official ring, like Poly’s, is exclusively available at J. Jenkins Sons Co. in Gwynn Oak. The bright showroom features all sorts of traditional rings, from high school to college to military. Pamela Brennan, who has worked there for decades, estimates that Jenkins makes about 200 rings a year for current students — the Class of 2024 will get theirs soon — but that there’s big business in replacement rings, especially around this time of year. They run an annual City-Poly special, some for people who want them in time for the game, and others who order them for a holiday gift to themselves.

“A lot of people lose them, or gave them to their boyfriends or girlfriends and never got them back. Or they lost them in the snow,” Brennan says. She knows of a guy who lost his on a sandy beach, but got it back after someone with a metal detector found it.

That’s not the only happy ending to a lost ring story. Rufus Roundtree, Class of ’89, lost his twice, once from “the drive-thru window of KFC, and, in later years, was hurled from my finger during a car accident. [It was] returned with a $50 cash reward and two monthly bus passes.”

Lori Prah, Class of ’89, got hers back, but only with parental intervention. “While still at City, I allowed this guy, whom I thought I was in love with, to hold my ring to wear on his chain.” Her displeased parents gave her a deadline to get it back from the guy, who “began to play games as if he had lost it.” Her folks had an apparently persuasive conversation with the young man. Game over. “I have my original ring today,” she said.

Some stories, like mine, end with sadness and an unresolved tan line on our ring fingers, like my Class of ’89 pal Eric Turner, whose City ring “disappeared” mysteriously when he took it off to run the fryer at the Royal Farms store on Falls Road where he worked one summer. Craig Allen (Class of ’89) lent his to a girl from Western High School to “wear on her necklace for pictures. She claims someone stole the chain and ring. Boy, was I stupid.”

Russell Bartholomee (Class of ’90) was upset to lose his while he moved to college “because I wanted to be one of those guys who younger City grads would bump into years later and immediately recognize as a fellow Knight.” But his wife replaced it on their 10th wedding anniversary. And Brian Fassler (Class of ’89) had his stolen in a bag that contained his car keys and wallet but was more heartbroken about the ring.

“Years later, replaced it with a new one with proceeds from a fantasy football championship,” he said. “I felt complete again.”

Arnold Levin, Class of ’65 and my late husband’s cousin, gave his ring to his girlfriend and her parents made her give it back. “We are married now for 51 years but she still does not wear it.”

What so many of us crave when we wear those rings are that feeling Russell wanted, of being spotted around the world and instantly connected to other City grads. Raskin was once stopped on a Madrid street by a Spanish gentleman whose brother had moved to Baltimore and whose nephew wore the same ring. “I whipped out my business card and wrote two words, ‘City Forever,’ and said ‘Please give this to your nephew.’”

It’s that feeling of family, both honorary and literally. Jennifer Cherry (Class of ’90) didn’t get a ring of her own because her parents, including her City graduate father, “didn’t like who I was dating at the time.” Like my cousin Arnie, she wound up marrying her high school sweetheart, Kai Cherry (Class of ’89), now her husband of 32 years. He lost his ring, as did their son Kaine (Class of 2010).

But these things — these rings — have a way of magically sometimes coming back to us, bonding us even more tightly. Cherry’s dad was someone you may have heard of, the late Pulitzer-Prize-nominated Baltimore Sun columnist Gregory Kane, whom her son is named for. When he died in 2014, “his City ring was the thing that I took. My mother knew she wasn’t winning any pushback in that. There was no way I was not going to have that ring with me.”

I never found my City ring — my husband and I frantically called the Florida Department of Transportation for days asking if they found it, but they said they couldn’t, although I have always believed it wound up at a pawn shop somewhere. Scott wanted to replace it — he even called Jenkins to price one — but never got around to it before he died in 2015.

Some happy endings have to be written yourself. So this week, I went to Jenkins and ordered a ring. Brennan let me try on the store’s collection of vintage City rings, some older and more worn than others but still sporting that shiny onyx and that castle that captured my heart all those years ago. Mine won’t be back for City/Poly, but I will have it in time for Christmas.

And Granddaddy, if you’re watching from Heaven, I promise to never give it to another boy, even my son. Maybe he’ll go to City one day. And he can get his own.

leslie.streeter@thebaltimorebanner.com

Leslie Gray Streeter

leslie.streeter@thebaltimorebanner.com

Leslie Gray Streeter is a columnist excited about telling Baltimore stories — about us and the things that we care about, that touch us, that tickle us and that make us tick, from parenting to pop culture to the perfect crab cake. She is especially psyched about discussions that we don't usually have. Open mind and a sense of humor required.

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