Searching For Elizabeth Jacus Rice Relatives

If you're related to Elizabeth Stewart Jacus Rice, who died March 15, 1987, at the age of 72, her old Washington High School (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) class ring can be yours.

That's right. If you recognize the name or the photographs that accompany this post (her high school and Coe College, class of 1937, graduation portraits) I'd like to hear from you.

In my Ramblin' column of Dec. 16 in The Gazette, I explained that Ron Alberts of Tiffin had found a girl's 1932 Washington High School class ring on the beach at Lake Macbride in the fall of 2000 when the lake's water level had been lowered for maintenance. All he knew was the ring had the initials ESJ.

In my Ramblin' column in today's Gazette (Dec. 28, 2009), I hopefully bring us closer to finding someone who'd love to have that memento that once belonged to mom, grandma or great-grandma. With the research of Charlene Hansen at the Geneological Society of Linn County (Iowa) we've pinned down the possible owner of that ring as Elizabeth Stewart Jacus.

According to Elizabeth's obituary, she was born July 8, 1914, in Minneapolis. She moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, some time as a youth to graduate from high school and college. She married Clifford Rice on Nov. 3, 1940, in Cedar Rapids. He died in 1959. Elizabeth was a proofreader at Stamats Publishing Co., from 1962 until her death.

The obituary listed three surviving children: Diane Fossum of Cupertino, Calif., Barbara Rice of Onalaska, Wisc., and Steven Rice of Madison, Wisc., as well as a sister, Janice Pomer of Seattle, Wash., and a brother, Willis Jacus, of Houston, Texas. She also had seven grandchildren.

The search for Elizabeth's children so far has turned up nothing. But, someone out there just might recognize her photograph or her name.

We may never know how Elizabeth came to lose her high school class ring at Lake Macbride. But it would be great to get this heirloom into the right hands.