Mayor Denson Reflects on Her Theft

After Bob Denson died five years ago, his widow Nancy put away his watch and class ring. He wouldn’t be needing them, and she was in no hurry to give them to one of their children. She had already given her son the little jewelry that was Bob’s.

And those diamond earrings, they were a present from her late husband. After his death, she didn’t find herself attending the sort of functions suitable for such sparkly jewelry. She just put them aside for a later day.

A few months ago, she wanted to wear those earrings, but she couldn’t find them. “I thought I had misplaced them,” the Mayor said. So she wore something else.

But when one of the children asked about Bob’s UGA ring, she went to get it. And it wasn’t there. The watch, and the box in which Bob had always kept it, was gone, too.

“There’s absolutely no way to know who it might have been who took these things,” she said.

Since last May, when she severely injured her leg in a bizarre car accident, the Mayor has had “all sorts of people” in her house, she said, helping out in various capacities. So many different people, she said, “There’s no one I would point a finger at.”

Mayor Denson, like many other people in Athens, with the .

The upside to the theft?

“I’m getting a burglar alarm installed,” she said. “Chief Lumpkin told me months ago to do this, and now I am.”