 |
| Jason's parents chose a place he loved - a tree in the woods he loved to hunt in - to commemorate his life with a simple bronze plaque. |
I founded this time capsule business in 1986 & called it 'Future Packaging' (now called Future Packaging and Preservation). At the time, here on the West Coast of the USA, area cities and communities were celebrating 'centennials': 100 years of founding for California cities Covina, Pomona, Baldwin Park, Azusa, Rancho Cucamonga, Chino, Whittier. Others saw the beginnings of their founding (the Southern California Air Quality Management District, the city of Irvine, the Metrolink Rail System).
In the 1980's, no one was computer savvy. I remember AOL, Compuserve, and Netscape. I remember floppy disks big and small. My time capsule marketing was direct. As I read about various celebrations and anniversaries, I typed out a letter and learned the wonders of word processing to do that more easily. Then I typed an envelope and added a first class stamp, and sent it off.
As the business developed and grew, I would get calls from people who wanted to memorialize veterans who'd died in their community (Valerie Esposito, Valley Stream NY) and those who wished to keep safe the memories of WWII soldiers who'd fought and died (the D-Day Museum). They taught me that time capsules could be used for a purpose nobler than vanity. It's true - many are just used for the 'me' purpose. Over my 25 years in the time capsule business, I've seen time capsules of sadness being memorialized by folks who simply wanted the dead to be remembered in the future. Not to forget.
Planting the seeds, not forgetting.
In doing this article, I remembered only a few of our time capsule containers that were placed as part of a memorial. The ones I remember best are those customers with whom I worked most closely, helping them enclose their items. I saw the little notes community members wrote about their lost loved ones. For the Oklahoma City one listed first, you would not think that the 1997 time capsule was done for the event that happened in 1995. But it was. The cornerstone sized 10 x 12 x 5" custom time capsule enclosed at least one newspaper from the bombing's aftermath and memories of lost loved ones. Of course, now there is no way to tell which of the time capsules that our customers purchase online are for tragedies, unless they tell us this and we record it along with their records.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, May 1997 (The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It would remain the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6, and injured more than 680 people. Source: Wikipedia.) In 1997 they placed one of our stainless steel time capsule boxes to fit an area in their new facility. A similar time capsule box is the Earth Time Capsule Measuring 10x8x18". The box holds 225 items or more (depending on the size of course).
Martin Luther King (MLK Visionaries, Riverside CA, December 1998). Time Capsule done in honor of Martin Luther King's life and works. A large time capsule, similar to this 14x14x30" Chemist model stainless steel time capsule box. This size time capsule holds up to 550 items or more, and accommodates longer things nicely.
Holocaust Related: Committee to Honor Raoul Wallenberg, Parsippany, New Jersey (a memorial time capsule in August 1998, for Harvey Hochstein). Again the time capsule size of choice is the Time Capsule Box Earth 10x8x18".
Bemis Public Library in Littleton, Colorado, August 1999 (Columbine High School shooting in Littleton happened in April of that year). For this time capsule, they had planned for a Millennium celebration and it became a memorial for many in the community in addition. It was a large time capsule box (see the Milky Way 14x14x30") and holds up to 600 or more items. The time capsule is to be opened again in 2099.
Memories are strangely intertwined in our minds and do not mirror the actual events. Maybe this is a blessing. Forgetting is almost inexcusable, but it happens over time and it's inevitable.
There are little things we can all do to remember - keep a diary, for instance, or write in a journal, or paste things into a scrapbook. After the death of our loved ones, it's helpful to those of us without the presence of our loved one to have a memorial or funeral or wake. The time capsule project, however, may best be delayed a few months - just long enough so that the sadness no longer overwhelms us but not so long as to inevitably forget. The most popular small time capsule for this is our 3.5x11.75" stainless steel "Sally" Time Capsule - large enough for a few sheets of paper or photos, a thumb drive, small trinkets.
