Return of lost wed ring stuns hubby, eases pain
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
Ruth McCourt and daughter Juliana were lost in attacks on World Trade Center. But five years later, heartbroken husband and father David was told of precious find: the wedding ring David put on Ruth's finger.
Juliana McCourt
The World Trade Center attacks stole everything that was precious from David McCourt - his wife, Ruth, and their 4-year-old daughter, Juliana, were passengers aboard Flight 175, the plane that exploded into the south tower.
But last month, as if dropped from heaven, McCourt got something back from that awful day.
His wife's wedding ring, a pearl and diamond-encrusted band that inexplicably survived the fiery crash in pristine condition, was returned by the NYPD.
"I think for me it is symbolic, in that it goes beyond the law of probability that I would get it back intact," McCourt told the Daily News. "I consider it a miracle. I just started crying because I felt like she was giving it back to me."
Five years after 9/11, the story of the McCourts' wedding band is one of luck and love, of persistence and pain, and of a disaster that continues to reveal buried secrets.
It also serves as a reminder that amid the tons of debris from that day, there are still some 400 pieces of jewelry - most of them ghostly globs of half-melted metal - sitting unclaimed at police headquarters.
