10 years ago, on May, 2, 2015, Lisa Curley was watching her son, Kyle Curley, in his division semi-final tennis match for USM. Kyle Curley was a Gorham High School graduate, where he had won two state championships throughout his high school tennis career. Because this was a playoff match, an official was present to call the lines and enforce the rules, and he began the match with an official coin toss.
The coin, a 1972 silver dollar, landed unfortunately and rolled into the hole under the metal bar where the center strap is clipped. The coin was irretrievable, which caused the official great sadness, as he explained that the coin had been his grandfather’s and had meant a lot to him. From her seat as a spectator, Lisa Curley felt awful for the official, and vowed to herself, “I’ll get it out of there for him.”
Curley is a special education teacher at Gorham High School, and has coached girls in high school volleyball and middle school basketball throughout her time at Gorham. Working at the high school and constantly seeing the tennis courts, Curley says she “always remembered it.”
She said, “It always stayed with me that something priceless was lost in there.” This past spring, Lisa Curley was in her classroom when she learned that the tennis courts were being torn up due to their reconditioning over the summer. Without hesitation, Curley sprang up from her classroom and ran to the tennis courts, where she climbed onto a bulldozer and found DJ, a man working for Shaw Brothers and helping to tear up the courts.
Curly recalls saying, “This is a long shot, but there’s something I’m looking for.” DJ, who Curley describes as the “local hero” of this story, retrieved the coin and returned it to the front office, where Curley discovered it at the end of the school day. “It was a miracle and a dream come true for me,” she explained.
The mission did not end there; Curley set out to uncover who the official was and how to return the coin to him. She contacted Al Bean, the Athletic Director at USM, who put her in touch with an official in Massachusetts who often came up to work the matches. From there, she was directed to the match assignor from 2015, who gave her a potential name.
Through many searches, references, and connections, Curley was eventually able to locate Larry Conway of Framingham, Massachusetts, the official who had lost his special coin all those years ago. Making the moment even more special, it just so happened that the day he learned of his grandfather’s coin’s retrieval was Father’s Day.
“Lots of people and pieces came together to solve the mystery,” Curley remarked. Conway was overjoyed, and Curley, who loves to “fix things and solve mysteries,” was fulfilled with this happy ending. “It only took me 10 years,” she said, but “it was really satisfying to know that such a beautiful thing had happened.”