Championship boxing belt, missing for more than 70 years, reunited with family

The return of a 1936 Newfoundland boxing belt to its rightful owners has solved two family mysteries.

Wilson Downey wore his father's championship belt Friday, ending more than half a century of searching for the prize, which went missing just beforethe outbreak of the Second World War.

• Grandson of 1930s Newfoundland boxing champ on quest to find missing title belt

The belt was returned to Downey and his son Norm by Pauline Thomas, who herself had been working "for years" to figure out the belt's origin. It came to her from a box of family memorabiliathat her husband inherited.

"I promised my husband that I would find out who it rightly belonged to. But he died before he knows this," she said Friday. "Perhaps he knows."

"I didn't think I'd ever see it," saidWilson Downey. "I started [looking] in 1958."

The reunion started to come together after Thomas caught the tail endof CBC'sHere & Nowbroadcast on Thursday, which featured the story of Downey's missing championship belt and his family's search to find it.

'I'm on Cloud 9 and I threw the ladder away, I'm not coming down.- Norm Downey

Thomas said she immediately called her daughter, who helped her track down Norm Downey's phone numberthrough Facebook.

"I was so excited, I shook," she said. "We're so happy, I've never been happier in my life that something so precious as this is back to where it belongs."

Norm Downey said that after he got a message from Thomas Thursday night, he and his family "basically ran down to the east end to pick up this treasure."

The belt was won by Norm's grandfather, Norman J. Downey, in 1936.

Norman J. Downey, who was discovered and groomed by a promoter following a bar-room scrap in Kitchener, Ont., won more than 140 fights in Canada and the United States over the course of his career.

He returned to Newfoundland and won the Newfoundland Boxing Association's lightweight championship.

The younger Norm Downey told CBCNews that he'd heard stories about the belt being put into a vault in a St. John's law office and never seen again.

It ended up in Thomas's family box.

"With all the photographs, pictures, memorabilia, was this beautiful thing," she said. "I did look for years to try and find the owner, but I just couldn't find it."

'I kissed it, and I screeched'

Since getting the family heirloom back, Norm Downey says he's been over the moon.

"'I'm on Cloud 9 and I threw the ladder away, I'm not coming down," he said.

"I kissed it, and I screeched and bawled," he said."They call me a Downey for a reason, because we're so soft-hearted. I just couldn't believe it."

The news came on his 50th birthday, and he said it was so good, he can't wait for his 75th.