XENIA — John Sale Manor resident Mary Dowler put a few items in the time capsule, which was buried at the apartment complex 10 years ago this week.
She opened the time capsule Nov. 26 to touch her items again — a copy of “The Kennedy Story,” a 1963 memorial supplement of The Philadelphia Enquirer, as well as photos of the apartment’s parking lot buried under a big snow in 2003.
“They took trucks and hauled it away,” Dowler said of the piles of snow. She’s been a resident at the Xenia apartment complex for 34 years.
Plastic-bag-wrapped items retrieved from the time capsule span decades, encompassing history of both John Sale Manor and Xenia.
According to a Gazette article published at the time of the burial, resident Penny Randall contributed the original, three-page letter she wrote the night of the April 3, 1974 tornado.
Dowler pulled out that letter.
“Guess I’ll stop now and try to get some sleep,” Randall wrote after evacuating patients from a nursing home where she worked to Bergamo Center in Beavercreek. “I’ll get this in the mail tomorrow, that is if we still have a post office.”
Another resident, a cancer survivor, had included articles on cancer treatments.
Dowler also pulled out an Ohio quarter, photos of the Methodist church which had occupied the site of the apartments, an Obama yard sign and war ration cards.
At one point, Sandy Miller, who coordinated the activity, found a black plastic flip phone, held it in the air and laughed.
Miller said the residents will gather items to place in another time capsule. They’ll bury it in the back of the complex near the flower gardens after the first day of the new year.
“Everyone can put in something that they want,” Miller said to the residents, who gathered around the table for the opening of the slightly-dirty silver cylinder.
A few residents already had their items ready for the next time capsule.
Miller said she’d be sure to leave instructions for someone to dig it up in 2029.
