"Rings were hard to come by in those days because of rationing," said Crane, 84.

Soon after, Biando's ship was sunk in the South Pacific and Helena was left alone to raise a baby.

Flash forward more than 60 years to a fire that ravaged a relative's home in Illinois. While cleaning up, Crane's cousin discovered a trunk in the attic. Undamaged by the fire, it contained Biando's uniform, and tucked inside a pocket was a love letter and a simple ring adorned with diamond chips. It was a present that Biando had intended to give Crane as a Christmas surprise before his death.

Today a widow once again, Crane wears the ring whenever her arthritis will allow it.

"He was the love of my life," she said.

Shiny and round, with no beginning or end, the wedding ring is our most enduring symbol of love and fidelity. The tradition began with the ancient Egyptians, who wove reeds into simple bands that could be slipped onto the ring finger of the left hand, believed to be the site of a vein that ran directly to the heart. Today, we choose them as an expression of individuality, leading to rings of every shape, size, color and design.

As individual as many are, most rings share one thing in common: They have a story - some sad, some funny, some poignant, and some tragic. Readers sent their favorite stories to The Salt Lake Tribune to celebrate June, the month we often associate with weddings. Here are some of those stories. Read more online at www.sltrib.com/athome.

Lost and found

Almost everyone has a story of the lost and/or found ring. Two civil servants, a firefighter and a policeman, told eerily similar tales of finding lost rings stashed in their undergarments. Two husbands relayed accounts of dropping rings in the shimmering waters of Hawaii, where the seabed surely must glitter with the newly exchanged - but not yet sized - bling of honeymooners. One woman watched as her fiance lost her engagement ring in a poker game.

One miraculous story came from Mack Sanders, grandson of John and Fannie Sanders, who raised apples, peaches and apricots in Hurricane around the turn of the 20th century. After the crops ripened, they would pick the fruit, lay it out to dry, then pack it into burlap bags. John would fill the wagon and head out for two or three months of door-to-door sales around the state. One day he knocked on a door and a woman answered. "Are you the fellow who sold me fruit a few years ago?" she asked him. Yes, he said. "I kept hoping someday you would come back," she told him. She had found something in the last bag he sold her: Fannie's wedding ring, lost years earlier while packing fruit.

Although their rings were never lost, Jim Struve and Jeff Bell have a story of how their rings were found. The Salt Lake City men say they "aspire to the spirit of compassion and nonviolence that are core values in Hopi culture," so they set out for the Southwest to find bands made by a Hopi jeweler. They eventually found gold rings bearing the tribal symbol of emergence: the figure of a man at the entrance to a maze, which illustrates the spiritual birth from one world into the next. The rings were matching in design, "reflecting the unity of our partnership," wrote Struve. But they were different in shape, "reflecting our desire that our relationship support each of us as unique individuals."

Last month, the men celebrated the 10th anniversary of their commitment to one another.

Tarnished

Where there is joy, there can also be great sorrow. Several readers told tales of what happened to rings once the love had faded.

The most candid came from an anonymous caller who described receiving a Dear John letter in 1945, right after surviving WWII's infamous Battle of the Bulge. On a pass to Paris, the man decided he would try to find "a good-looking lady who would take me to her apartment and keep me for the night. Well, it did work out, and it was a very pleasant evening. The wedding band was left in payment for services rendered," he said, adding that he needed to speak quickly while his current wife was away.

After her divorce, Lori O'Connor wasn't sure what to do with the ring she had worn for 20 years. She wanted a "closing chapter" for her marriage, so she decided to return to the beach where she was married, she wrote in an e-mail. She took a small, blue bottle filled with treasures - iridescent confetti stars, a beautiful butterfly, the ring and a note that read, "May this ring be a reminder to whoever finds it that 'magic' between two people does exist. When you have 'magic' in your life, it is the most powerful force you will ever experience."

Then she chucked it into the sea. It was better than putting it in a drawer and feeling sad whenever she caught sight of it, she said. And it let her imagine happy endings for the ring: Would a small boy find it and give it to his mother? Was a beautiful orange starfish now wearing her diamond? Would a broken-hearted woman find it and discover new hope?

Transformed

Sometimes a couple or a ring must go through a difficult transformation before it can become a powerful symbol.

Jeanne Cady Snarr and her five sisters took turns selecting pieces of jewelry from their Scottish grandmother's collection after the woman's death. They drew numbers, and sister No. 5 was the first to choose, taking the only thing any of the women really wanted: Gran's gold wedding band.

"That gold band never really stays on my sister's finger," Snarr wrote in an e-mail. Instead, it is given to any sister who needs support - the sister who had brain surgery, another who was far from home and another who was going through a rough time.

Recently, sister No. 5 took off her own wedding ring and began life as a single mother of two. "She is the one who now wears Gran's gold ring for comfort. She is the one who needs our grandmother's legacy and symbol of strength . . . one that is stronger and more pure than gold."

Although Brian Benington wore many rings in his life, the most meaningful one may be the ring he never really wore. He didn't have a proper wedding ring when he was first married, although on their 25th anniversary, his wife presented him with a silver ring crafted from a piece of cutlery.

The two were trying to hold together a marriage that had been strained for years because of Benington's attraction to men. "None of my best efforts at prayer or 'righteous' living, romance, nor the kind counsel of others . . . could remove something so much at the core of my being," wrote Benington.

Soon after, he realized that he could be gay, moral and spiritual all at the same time. So the couple gathered their three grown children and announced they would divorce.

Today, his ex-wife wears rings given to her by her new husband. Benington's married daughter wears the sapphire ring he once gave to his wife. Two years ago, he surprised his partner, Duane, with a simple stainless-steel band, though it was later lost.

Benington no longer wears any particular ring. There may be a wedding band in his future, maybe in his home country of South Africa, where everyone is allowed to marry, regardless of sexual orientation. Maybe someday even in America, he said.

Annabel Curry said her mother-in-law-to-be didn't want her son, Wallace Curry, marrying her. But when Annabel became pregnant, the wedding was almost inevitable. The mother-in-law conceded the fight, but insisted her son buy a cheap wedding ring. He gave her a simple band with eight tiny diamond chips. Despite its simplicity, "I cherish that ring," said Annabel, who now is a widow. The irony? Once on a vacation, she talked Wally into buying diamond earrings for his mother. The old woman refused to accept them because the diamonds weren't big enough. "These chips were good enough for me, but those diamonds were too small for her."