This summer while doing some landscaping cleanup* in the front of Chatham Middle School, our buildings & grounds crew discovered not one, but two time capsules placed in the ground by Chatham students more than half a century ago! At the time these were buried, the building was Chatham High School, as our current high school building had not yet been built.
Unearthed first was a metal tube that contained the names of the Class of 1968 along with a program from their class play Happiness is "68". The papers were in remarkably good condition, however the program's staples had long since dissolved, leaving only rust marks behind.
Found a short time later was a threaded metal pipe that contained a History of the Class of 1969, a list of the cast of the class play 12 Angry Jurors, and blueprints for the 1969 Chatham High School Yearbook. These papers were quite damp and smelled strongly of mimeograph ink, but were also in remarkably good condition.
We carefully laid out the documents to dry flat so that they remain well preserved. CMS Principal Brett Fortran plans to have our middle school social studies classes view them this fall and then everything will be transferred to CHS to become part of its collection of time capsules and other historic memorabilia related to our high school.
* School officials were careful to make sure that no Arbor Day or dedicated trees were removed as a result of this cleanup.