When Principal Jay Richard arrived at Rundlett Middle School in 2023, he found a strange box – metal, the size of a shoebox and bound in white athletic tape – and some manila envelopes tucked away in a closet in his office.
Time capsules. He could tell from the “Don’t open until” messages penned on each one. Most of the dates in the messages had passed, 2017, 2010, et cetera.
“It was just here,” he said. “I think, maybe, someone had forgotten about it.”
He kept them safe, but for the most part let them be.
Fast forward to this week, when construction began in earnest on the site for a new middle school, and Richard remembered.
Over the last few days, he and teachers Amy Schaeffner and Regina Wall have gone through the collection and cataloged what’s known. Many of them were put together by ninth-grade anthropology classes, from when Rundlett was a junior high.
Each envelope contains messages from past students, along with hand-drawn maps, pirate-style, for where the boxes or bins were buried.
On Wednesday, four metal trash cans that last touched air in 1992 – from the Concord High School graduating class of 1995 – were carefully plucked from the dirt at Rundlett and placed into storage.
There are others in the mix:
- From the CHS class of 1979, at Rundlett in 1976: located and still buried
- From the CHS class of 1991, at Rundlett in 1988: never buried and not yet opened.
- From the CHS class of 1992, at Rundlett in 1989: located but paved over in a courtyard, will be dug up later.
Richard, Schaeffner and Wall are working to contact alumni who may have helped put them together. The goal is to involve current students in the process, too.
There are also rumors about other time capsules on the property, not well documented or mapped for the intended recipients.
In the letter from 1976, students noted that they were attaching a thorough map, “and in this way we won’t be repeating the mistake of past classes.”
It means there could be more out there they don’t know of yet, Wall said.
But please, the Rundlett team said, don’t go looking for or trying to dig up a time capsule at the middle school. Classes are still going on, and, more importantly, the yard is an active and closed construction zone.
Alumni who are interested in being part of the opening or have information about time capsules are asked to contact Schaeffner (aschaeffner@sau8.org) and Richard (jay.richard@sau8.org).
