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Cette veste vient d’où? Stillwater letter jacket found in Paris thrift shop

mary divine, pioneer press
·2 min read

Lars Stannard was browsing in a secondhand shop in Paris a few days ago when he spotted a familiar red-and-black article of clothing – a Stillwater Area High School letter jacket.

Stannard, a 2016 graduate of the high school, snapped a few photos and sent them to SAHS French teacher Amy Saur Budion via Instagram on Monday morning.

“I’m wondering if you had anything to do with this,” he asked his former teacher.

Budion, who chaperones trips to France for the high school and also teaches at Stillwater Middle School, assured him that she had not, but she offered to help find out the name of the jacket’s former owner. She posted two photos that Stannard had sent to her on Instagram and Facebook with the following message: “Help solve the mystery of the Stillwater Letterman jacket and how it arrived in Paris?!??”

By zooming in on the photos posted, it appears the jacket belonged to someone with the letters “RITT” in the middle of their name who graduated in 2000, she said.

“That’s before my time in Stilly, but I’m fascinated!!” she wrote, adding a string of hashtags, including “#goponies #stillwaterclassof2000 #whodoesthisbelongto #workyourmagicinstagram #lostlettermanjacket.”

A friend looked through the 2000 yearbook and found out there was a “Brittany” and a “Brittan” who graduated that year, Budion said.

A badge sewn to the black letter “S” on the front of the jacket appears to be a volleyball, but a contact in the school district’s athletic department said she had looked on the volleyball rosters and could not make a match “with the limited number of letters provided,” Budion said. “She said it looked like it could be a one-time/one-sport letter winner or a foreign-exchange student.”

Stannard did not provide the name of the shop or how much they wanted for the jacket, she said.

“If it were me, I would have gotten a picture of just the name, checked the size, checked the pockets,” she said. “I want to know how it ended up in France. Did it end up in a Goodwill? Did it go over with an exchange student? Was it a gift from a host family? I don’t know.”

Budion said she’s had lots of responses to her post.

“Everybody loves a good mystery,” she said. “Everybody loves playing detective. I hope we can figure out who it belonged to — or at least what the story is behind it.”

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