My name is Pamela Blackfield and I wanted to share an incredible story about something miraculous that happened to my mother, Cecilia Blackfield. Cecilia is 99 years young and totally inspirational! She has tons of friends and a wonderful happy spirit!
My mother has been a fantastic role model to my sister Karen and to me. Cecilia has taught us the blessings of sharing, giving back to the community, and helping those less fortunate than ourselves.
Cecilia is well known in Honolulu as a crusader for beautification of our islands and for the preservation of our parks. She has played a key leadership role in the enactment of major initiatives to preserve Hawaii's beauty and is widely respected for her expertise on development and conservation issues.
When Cecilia's son Leland, my brother, died at an early age, she took a tragic situation and turned it into a positive by establishing The Leland Blackfield Youth Center at Palama Settlement. Leland loved children and sports and she felt that this was a fitting way to honor her son's memory. The center is located in one of the poorest neighborhoods in town and is a place where at-risk children in the area can come and have a safe, supervised place to hang out, learn new activities and play. Cecilia also established The Leland Blackfield and Friends Scholarship fund in his honor to help needy students have a chance to attend college. She also established in her husband's memory, The William Blackfield Scholarship Fund at Hastings College of the Law for that same purpose.
One day I received a phone call from the director of the Blackfield Youth Center in Honolulu, Hawaii telling me that she had received a phone call from a man in Florida who thought that he had some memorabilia that might belong to the Blackfield family! So I called him and he said that he loves baseball and he collects World Series memorabilia and that he had found a St. Louis Cardinals 1967 World Series Ring in a pawn shop in Reno, Nevada and purchased the ring. It was all beaten up and the diamond in it missing.
He contacted Balfour, the company that makes the rings and asked if they could restore it to its original condition. They said that they could and also told him that every ring is registered to its owner and this ring was made for Leland Blackfield when the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series in 1967. The gentleman on the phone said that he started thinking how something so precious and special got out of the hands of its original owner. So he started to search on the internet to try to find its owner. While on his search, he found out that Cecilia Blackfield in Honolulu, Hawaii was being honored for establishing The Leland Blackfield Youth Center. The article went on to say that Leland was a scout for the St. Louis Cardinals and loved to umpire Little League games.
So he put two-and-two together and thought that this might be the same Leland Blackfield whose World Series Ring he had bought in a pawn shop in Reno, Nevada years ago.
Indeed it was! Leland, over 26 years earlier had been robbed of his most precious possession and this was his ring! The generous spirit said that he had spent a lot of money purchasing and restoring the ring and did not want any money for it. He then went on to say that there was something though that he did want in return. I asked him what that was and he said that he wanted us to give my mother the ring from him on the day she was being honored for establishing the Youth Center in her son Leland's name.
He said it has been a long journey, 26 years, but the story ends well with the ring being returned to Leland's family and its rightful owners. The man on the other end of the phone wanted to remain anonymous and just do a good deed!
I thought this was a beautiful story that should be shared; it restores my faith in humanity.