VILLAGE OF HAMBURG
Time capsule for kin tests residents’ imaginations
Children in 2057 won’t have to read history books to find out what life was like in Hamburg in 2009.
They can read the letters written by their grandparents placed with care in a time capsule in Centennial Park.
Children and adults are being encouraged to place a letter in a time capsule that will be buried in the park at Main and Buffalo streets sometime this fall.
“How do you write to someone 50 years from now,” said Dale Neseman, who suggested the idea. “I know people are writing to grandchildren who don’t exist yet.”
Neseman, a member of the community group Imagine: Hamburg, got the idea from the Town of Elma, which did something similar when it celebrated its sesquicentennial in 2007 by opening a letter that had been in a trunk for 50 years. Neseman, who draws editorial cartoons for 35 newspapers across the country, including several in Erie County, received a letter from his grandmother.
“She told me to be a good boy, and grow up to be a responsible citizen,” he said of the letter written when he was 10.
His cousin got a letter from his father, who wondered if it would be possible in 2007 for a son to hunt pheasant with his father because of all the development in the town.
“That’s kind of hard to believe you’re writing to someone who has not walked the Earth yet,” he said.
Students in Joanne Yoviene’s fifth grade class at Union-Pleasant Elementary School pondered those thoughts as they composed their letters for the time capsule. When the teacher first heard of the idea, she thought it would be great.
“We imagined if you were a 10- year old in 2059, what would you want to know about the life of a 10- year-old in 2009,” she said.
They talked about including details about their home life, school, and what is going on in the world. Students wrote about their family, pets and what chores they had. They included world events, such as about the president, and the Iraq War.
“They really cared what the kids in the future thought,” Yoviene said.
The time capsule vault is big enough for letters only. Residents can bring their messages for the future to the Village Hall, 100 Main St.
Imagine: Hamburg suggests the letters be handwritten in pencil or a ball point pen on acid-free paper. No crayons or markers should be used. No more than two envelopes per family, with a maximum of three sheets of paper inside. And they should be addressed “To the family of . . .”
The group also suggests telling children and grandchildren over the years that there is a letter waiting for them in the time capsule.
“I wish I’d live long enough to be around when they open it, but I won’t be,” Neseman, 61, said.
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