Friday, December 11, 2015

E.L. Sheppard 1991 Time Capsule

The Chartiers Valley Class of 1998 gathered over Thanksgiving weekend for a trip down memory lane.

As fifth graders at E.L. Sheppard elementary school in 1991, they created a time capsule full of memories from that year.

“The time capsule wasn’t huge, but it was full of a lot of memories,” said Danielle Gromek, CV Class of 1991. “It had a ton of newspaper clippings, ads for stores that were popular, pictures of bands like New Kids on the Block, and a cassette tape of Laura Mullen playing the piano.”

“It even had a notebook where every kid wrote what they were planning to do in 25 years,” continued Gromek. “Some of what the kids wrote even came true!”

One student – Alicia Guarnaccio – wrote that she wanted to become a teacher. Ms. Guarnaccio is now a physical education teacher at the Chartiers Valley Middle School!

Though the time capsule said, “do not open until 2016,” a group of eleven students opened it in November 2015.

“We opened it a month and a half early,” said Gromek. “So many things had to happen in order to make it possible. So this is just how the timing fell into place.”

After E.L. Sheppard elementary school was closed, the building was sold and became a church. It was recently sold again to Tom Rojahn from the Bible Chapel. Gromek happened to run into somebody who knew Rojahn and put the two in contact. Rojahn allowed the class to come back this fall to dig for the time capsule, but their search was unsuccessful.

They later discovered that the time capsule was given to now retired teacher Mr. Lane after the school closed. Mr. Lane kept it in his basement for years.

Once they located the time capsule, the group planned to convene at the old E.L. Sheppard school over Thanksgiving weekend to open the time capsule and celebrate with pizza and cake.