It took a community effort to bury the time capsule in the front yard of Carroll Fowler Elementary School in May 2000 and it took a community effort to find its location to unearth it. The large aluminum container sealed over 25 years ago was opened at a special Friday morning school assembly, and its contents removed to the oohhs and ahhs of students and teachers alike.
Principal Arti Narayan told the students that the Ceres Boy Scout troop buried the time capsule years before they were born and that efforts to find it proved more difficult than anticipated.
“We couldn’t even find the time capsule,” recounted Narayan. “Over the years we’ve had some construction and the time capsule was moved. So when we went to look for it, it was gone.”
She explained that Jim Bullock, Ceres Unified School District’s director of Maintenance, and his crew of three began probing the ground but couldn’t find it. Bullock then fetched the blueprints which indicated that the capsule was buried 12 feet from the flagpole. Attempts to find it based on the new information were fruitless so CUSD asked to borrow a metal detector from Ceres Police. The device didn’t help either.
Then CUSD turned to a local company, Exceed GPR, which brought in Ground Penetrating Radar. Even though the large metal cylinder was only buried under four feet of dirt, it was covered in plastic which affected its detectability.
Persistence paid off and the capsule finally made its way to daylight.
After the lid was unscrewed Friday morning, the contents of the capsule were removed one piece at a time, the first being an American flag that was soiled by a bit of mildew.
The second item was an emblem of a cow which was placed by then teacher and now board trustee Valli Wigt.
“My classroom was totally decorated in nothing but cows,” Wigt remarked. “I remember giving all this. This is fantastic.”
While most of the items like photos were placed in sealed plastic baggies, slight moisture had formed inside but most the items were not ruined. Those items included a sealed packet of the Modesto Bee newspapers, the May 10, 2000 edition of the Ceres Courier, a Star Wars magazine, a Time magazine cover from 1998, the 1999-2000 Carroll Fowler student newsletter, coins, the school’s screaming eagle banner, a school accountability report card, and a disc with digital photos taken by then school photographer Dennie Farris.
Among the curious who attended was Patrick Stacy, a scout who helped bury the time capsule. His father, David Stacy who was a troop leader 25 years ago, was unable to attend as he is fighting leukemia. Former Carroll Fowler Eva Purkis returned to watch the capsule unveiling.
Former school secretary Rachelle Garrett dropped by to sing the National Anthem while former principal Emily Harry and former vice principal Reed Volk showed up for the special occasion.
Club master of Ceres Boys Scouts Pack 132 Jennifer Rushman, who was part of the ceremony to bury the time capsule back before the pre-9/11 days, explained why Carroll Fowler is a special place for her scouts.
“We actually started our pack in 1986 with our first meeting here on the Carroll Fowler campus, 39 years ago,” said Rushman. “And we’ve been going strong. This is our home school. We still meet monthly in your school and currently we have 10 scouts that attend Carroll Fowler that are in our pack along with other Ceres Unified schools. So we just want to say thank you for letting us be a part of this again in opening up our time capsule.”
Miguel Aguilar Jr. and David Prieto of Exceed GPR said they spent three to four hours with their radar device trying to pinpoint its location.
“So first the measurements were off,” Prieto noted. “It was encased in plastic and the plastic drum. Normally when we locate something like this, since its aluminum, it’ll rate even better but since this was in plastic it was super hard to located.
“They wanted to call it quits and they’re like, ‘No, we got to find this for the kids that were here’ so we just kept going.”
The company is typically called to find utility lines so this was a first to help locate a time capsule. Miguel Aguilar Sr. pledged to not charge the district for its time.
To put things in perspective, 2000 was the year George W. Bush was elected president and Barack Obama lost a primary election for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Being before 9/11, airport security was not nearly as tight as it is today.
