By Peter Lyons Hall
It was about 10AM on Sunday morning, August 18, 2024, when Mayor Tom Howley gave the signal to the Bobcat mini-excavator operator to begin lifting up the time capsule from 1974 that had been thoughtfully buried 50 years ago with the expectation that during Greenwood Lake’s Centennial it would be unearthed to reveal what was important to the Village residents at the time for future friends and relatives to discover.
The contents had been carefully wrapped in paper bags then covered with a layer or two of aluminum foil before being gathered into smaller groups and then placed into larger plastic bags which would protect the contents, they thought, from the damage that moisture could impart. They even had marked the burial spot, near the old firehouse on Waterstone Road (now the community center) and planned for the future excavation in 2024. But burial in a concrete vault was later found to be susceptible to leakage and water damage, which onlookers this day soon learned.
After carefully steering the excavator into the doorway of the Community Center the concrete vault had to be chiseled around the edge of the lid in order for it to be removed. Once separated from the bottom of the vault, the contents revealed several plastic bags, floating in several inches of water that had leaked into the concrete container. Jill Cronin, Greenwood Lake Librarian and Sue Gardner, Deputy Historian for the Town of Warwick, had donned white cotton gloves to begin the inspection process, but they quickly replaced them with latex gloves, due to the waterlogged condition of the contents that had also been wrapped in paper bags then covered with a layer of aluminum foil, which, at the time, was the favored technique for preserving artifacts that would be opened at a later date. Meanwhile, hundreds of community members waited with baited breath for news or descriptions of the items to be revealed inside the wrapped packages.
Greenwood Lake Historian, Marilyn Hayden, who was helping to carefully unwrap the contents that were not affected by the water began reading aloud from one of the many editions of local newspapers from 1974. Then she announced that there were additional items that included a 1974 ledger of the salaries of members of the police department, the current budget for the Village, an autographed MUSH baseball, an old straw hat, and some interesting audio cassette tapes together with 8mm video reels, and a 35mm slide carousel – all of which needed to be dried out and restored to see what had been recorded on them.
Long-time resident of Greenwood Lake, Ed English, was there to view two MatchBox cars that he had placed into the 1974 time capsule, an old Chevrolet Corvette and a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, both purchased locally on Windermere Ave. during the 1970s. They were among the items recovered when the capsule was opened. Other artifacts included an old leather fireman’s helmet, several editions of the Greenwood Lake News, and various proclamations.
After more and more water-soaked packages were uncovered from the vault, a decision was quickly made to preserve the remaining contents by first recording and photographing each of the packages then freezing them. This process takes several weeks but allows time to separate the water layers from the documents and photos. The group located a commercial freezer that is currently acting as the preserver for the remaining items until later this fall when the contents can be more carefully examined and revealed. Once that happens the public will be invited to review the full contents of the time capsule and will also have the opportunity to purchase a special envelope in which to place their own items for a future group of residents to open 50 years from now, in 2074. The next time capsule container will be stored above ground, however, in the basement of the Greenwood Lake Library, a method much preferred by historians after witnessing a number of excavations that had a similar experience with materials buried in a watery environment instead of what they thought would be a preserved dry tomb.
The Greenwood Lake Centennial Committee had been planning this and other events for over 18 months. An old-time baseball game, scheduled for the afternoon of August 18, 2024, will be rescheduled due to weather conditions. To view more about the Centennial events that have occurred throughout the year, click on https://GWLCentennial.org.
