The daughter of Tlingit carver George Lewis has been reunited with a bracelet her father made for her in 1987.
Verna Adams, 64, of Humeston, Iowa, said her husband was on the Internet, reading the Chilkat Valley News account of the bracelet discovered last summer in the shallows of the Chilkoot River, when she thought of one Lewis made for her that she had lost.
Adams was serving as a sergeant major in the Salvation Army in the mid-1980s when she had her father create a bracelet depicting the “internal circle of life,” a Bible story. The design shows three crosses surrounded by flames, flanked by a coho and a dog salmon.
She recently contacted her younger sister Georgiana Hotch of Haines, who was holding the bracelet discovered by resident Jim Shook. She was reunited with the bracelet on a trip here this week.
“I really appreciate Jim Shook for finding the rightful owner. It means a lot to me because George was my father,” Adams said.
She said when the bracelet went missing, she didn’t know where she’d lost it. She now thinks it may have come off while she was eulachon fishing at Chilkoot. “My hands were cold, so I didn’t know it had fallen off my wrist… It’s been in the river for 20 years. It’s a blessing to me that it’s come back to me after all this time.”
Shook was thanked during a presentation Monday at the 40-day memorial for Barbara Lewis, the late sister of Adams and Hotch.