May 19, 2015
TRADITIONS: A keepsake recovered
The beer that Mark F. Harriman ’88 and Brian K. Monroe ’88 & ’89G shared at their Providence College class reunion in 2013 couldn’t have tasted better.
In addition to celebrating 25 years of their bond as classmates, Harriman and Monroe toasted a distinct kinship forged by their fondness for their class ring. It was Harriman who, in 2009, called Monroe to tell him he had found Monroe’s long-lost ring, and now they were meeting for the first time not only since then, but their graduation.
The first PC men’s tennis student-athlete to receive a scholarship, Monroe somehow lost his ring while playing at his tennis club in Jacksonville, Fla., in 2006 and felt terrible.
Meanwhile, a couple of years later, Harriman went searching for a backup class ring because his meant so much to him. When he purchased his ring as a senior in 1988, he bought a second one, for his father, the late Jerome Harriman ’53, who never owned one. Harriman had the ’88 changed to ’53 and gave it to his father at the Legacy Dinner on Commencement Weekend.
Harriman, a Providence resident, actually found a PC Class of 1988 ring while searching on eBay. He purchased it and put it aside.
Harriman’s brothers knew how much his PC ring meant to him. When their father died later in 2008, they gave him the 1953-inscribed ring. After some time had passed, realizing he didn’t need three rings, Harriman examined the ring he bought online. He noticed the engraving “Brian Mo.” After a little research, he came up with Monroe’s name and called him with the good news.
“I was somewhat taken aback at Brian’s gratitude when I first called him, but I really shouldn’t have been. I was only looking in the mirror at someone whose ring meant as much to him as mine did to me,” said Harriman, who is a member of the PC National Alumni Association Council and the chair of the Providence President’s Council. He is a senior commercial lender for a Massachusetts-based credit union.
Monroe, the founder and principal of his own investment company, remarked, “The ring embodies what Providence is all about: integrity, trust, and honesty.”
