By Joe Earle
joeearle@reporternewspapers.net
Greetings from the past, carefully wrapped and sealed in plastic, made the 25-year journey from then to now unscathed.
The little bundle of papers had been assembled in the 1980s as a time capsule. It was intended to give future Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School students a chance to touch their school’s past.
Carla Klepper was on hand when the time capsule was assembled to celebrate Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School’s 25th anniversary and placed in the cornerstone of the school’s fine arts building. She was the president of the school’s parents association then, she said.
Now she teaches journalism at Holy Innocents’. On May 17, she took part in the celebration when the time capsule was reopened to celebrate the school’s 50th year.
“It’s been a thrill for me to see the growth the school has had,” she said. “It’s been just a tremendous treat to see the school evolve.”
Holy Innocents’ opened in 1959 with 72 students aged 3 to first grade. It now enrolls 1,370 students from pre-kindergarten to high school, the school website says.
The 25-year-old contents of the time capsule were to be placed on display in the school library. The capsule held various odds and ends — notes from students, a parents’ directory, a copy of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” which then-Headmaster Alice Malcolm said she included because the story was among her favorites.
A new bundle of papers and several items chosen to give future students a glimpse of Holy Innocents’ in 2010 – a copy of the school paper, a 50th anniversary T-shirt, a ceramic model of SpongeBob SquarePants — were secured inside a colorfully decorated plastic pipe and hidden in a hole drilled into the cornerstone.
If all goes as planned, it will remain there for another 25 years, when it will be opened to celebrate the school’s 75th anniversary.