On a spring afternoon more than five decades ago, William P. Wall, a standout Eastern linebacker turned youth sports coach and teaching intern at Tekoa High School, dropped his 1968 Eastern class ring while working with kids on the small town’s playing fields.
The ring belonging to the man nicknamed “Bink” would remain hidden until it was unearthed on another spring day, this one in 2025, when a member of the Northwest Treasure Hunters metal-detecting club snagged the dirt-encrusted band from under an inch or so of grass.
“I was really excited, and I couldn’t wait to show my buddy Tom,” says metal detector enthusiast James Murphy. “There’s nothing like holding a piece of history from who knows how long ago. Each artifact tells a little story. We love saving history, that’s what we really do.”
Murphy, who lives in Newman Lake, Washington, was particularly intent on saving this piece of history, sensing it would mean a lot to its owner. He spent more than 40 hours online using initials etched inside the ring that read either MBM or WPW (depending upon the angle) to track down its owner.
What he found was heartbreaking: Bink Wall, who’d been commissioned as an Army officer right out of college, was deployed to Vietnam shortly after losing the ring. He never made it home.
Determined to do the right thing, Murphy shifted his efforts to returning the ring to Lt. Wall’s family.
An online obituary reported that Wall had been married to his college sweetheart, Linda, who was pregnant with their second child when he fell in battle. Stephanie was born just two days after her father’s memorial service. Their oldest daughter, Laura, was just 18 months old at the time.
“As more pieces unfolded, it was emotionally taxing. I never realized that the story that would unfold would eat away at me like it did,” says Murphy, a 39-year-old navy veteran who has lost several friends in combat. He has also grieved the loss of a young daughter over the past decade.
Murphy, through his research and community connections, tracked down Wall’s brother, Tom, who connected him with Wall’s widow, Linda, who attended EWU from 1965 to 1968 before returning to finish her degree later in life. What followed brought to light a story of love, loss and a rich tapestry of Eastern-inspired relationships.
Linda Wall-Sullivan, who remarried 46 years ago, was surprised to learn that Murphy had found Bink’s long-lost ring. And, also, that he had gone to such great lengths to return it (while declining any reward).
Later, while meeting with an InsideEWU reporter, Wall-Sullivan filled in the ring’s back story.
Strong support from both sides of the family helped Wall-Sullivan and her children through the darkest moments, she says. This and unexpected friendships forged along the way.
Word of Bink’s death — and the young family he left behind — soon reached the public, chiefly through a 1970 Spokesman-Review front-page story with the headline, “Youthful War Widow Starts a New Life.” After that newspaper hit the stands, it wasn’t long before other military widows started reaching out.
“We formed a little support group and met regularly,” says Wall-Sullivan, who recalls, “It was a really tough time for a lot of people.”
She went on to help other women experiencing similar losses, including two additional young wives who had lost husbands raised in Tekoa. In the end, she says, “there were hundreds of people like me.”
