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(This article originally appeared on January 9, 2005 in the Washington
Post) Former Students Seek A Capsule Lost in Time:
No One Can Remember Where -- or If -- Mementos Are Buried in Alexandria
by Tara Bahrampour
Remember the Titans?
Those Titans -- the ones in the recent movie -- were the high school
football team that, according to Hollywood, single-handedly slew racism in
Alexandria 34 years ago. T.C. Williams, the school where it all took place,
remembers them well and has a showcase full of movie posters and old newspaper
clippings to prove it.
But seven slightly older Titans -- members of the graduating class of 1967,
the school's first -- have lately had trouble with their own memories of high
school. This wouldn't be an issue except that the old building is being torn
down, and they are supposed to know the whereabouts of a time capsule that was
buried when it was dedicated.
The seven friends remember some things about their alma mater -- walking over
still-wet cement as they guided visitors through the new school, naming the
school newspaper (the Oracle), starting its literary magazine (the Labyrinth).
But the box of memorabilia they supposedly helped compile as teenagers has them
flummoxed. They can't remember what was in it. Or where it was buried. Or
whether it existed at all.
Yes, it was the '60s. And yes, the friends ran a nightclub called the
Bottleneck in the garage at one boy's home on Ridge Road Drive. But these former
student body presidents and school newspaper editors and crew rowers insist that
when they were in high school, drugs had not entered their world. And they swear
that all they did in the Bottleneck was dim the lights and drink soda. And
listen to "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Norwegian Wood." And "maybe kiss" members
of the opposite sex.
After high school, as their generation slouched reluctantly toward haircuts
and jobs, the seven friends graduated from prestigious colleges and became
professional successes: a vice president at the NASD; the commonwealth's
attorney for Alexandria; the chief information officer for the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security. Surely the convergence of such great minds could find a
time capsule that, according to T.C. Williams lore, was buried somewhere on
campus when the school was built in 1965.
The capsule hadn't been on their radar until last month, when the school
asked them to help locate it before the demolition and they realized they didn't
know where it was.
"Most of these people are East Coast preppie success stories, and none of us
can remember a . . . thing," said Bob Wood, 1966 student body president and now
a retired teacher.
"We were like, 'How can that be?' " said John Komoroske, the school's first
newspaper editor and now a vice president with the NASD, formerly the National
Association of Securities Dealers. "It was one of those things like, 'I thought
you had it,' and 'Huh? I thought you had it.' "
At that point, finding it became a mission. Each friend was assigned a task.
Wood scoured Alexandria Gazette archives for hours and came away with only a
vague reference to a metal container. Betsy Land Lewis, who was quarterback of
the senior class powder-puff football team and is now a partner in a Reston law
firm, found a Dec. 5, 1965, school inauguration program that mentions a
"historic capsule" but doesn't say where it went. Dick de Wilde, an alumnus
living in California, recently returned to T.C. to meditate on the subject and
now thinks the capsule was interred near the flagpole out front.
As in all the best treasure hunts, time is of the essence: Work has begun on
razing the old T.C. to make way for a new one. The current faculty and staff
have searched, but all the school librarian could find was an old newsletter
describing the school's inauguration ceremony at which students sang excerpts
from Handel's "Messiah" -- a recording of which is supposedly sealed in the
capsule.
The alumni think they remember a less official and more colorful capsule
being created by the students. For that, Steve Cooper, former Labyrinth editor
and now chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security,
recalls plotting to slip in a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, a "sweet alcoholic drink"
that "probably would taste better" after 40 years underground.
Wood remembers a "slightly acrimonious discussion" over what pop music to
include in that capsule. Contenders, he believes, were the Beatles, the Rolling
Stones, a local band called the British Walkers and possibly Alexandria's own
Jim Morrison, who had graduated from George Washington High School six years
earlier and whose song "Light My Fire" hit No. 1 in April of Wood's senior year.
Alexandria's mayor, William D. Euille, who graduated from T.C. in 1968, was a
bass clarinetist in the school band, which may have played at the capsule's
burial ceremony. A School Board member has suggested that Euille be hypnotized
to retrieve memories of the event.
"I've never been hypnotized before in my life," Euille said, "but as long as
I would be able to come back to the real world eventually, I'd be willing to
undergo that particular feat." He added that he was also willing to give $500 to
whoever can solve the mystery.
But Cooper has had enough of the mental exercises and instead proposes to
distribute sledgehammers to the group and start hacking into the school grounds.
"At this point, I don't think we have a lot to lose," he said.
Pressed on whether destroying school property would be a good idea, Cooper
promised to alert the principal first. But he added that with Komoroske as a
city planning commissioner, Euille as mayor and former Oracle editor Randy
Sengel as commonwealth's attorney, there might be few left to prosecute the
crime.
Meanwhile, the would-be raiders of the lost capsule might have to rely on
extrapolations to shed light on its possible contents. A 1968 container
unearthed last summer by a less amnesiac high school class in Bucks County, Pa.,
included a TV Guide with Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner on the cover, a Super
Ball, a news report on the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, a pack of mint
LifeSavers, a Sears catalogue, a Rolling Stones album and a bottle of champagne.
T.C. alumni may be comforted to know that, according to the Atlanta-based
International Time Capsule Society, faulty memory is a common hazard for capsule
hunters. The organization's Web site urges capsule makers to document their
burials carefully and lists nine "Most Wanted" missing time capsules, including
a container buried by Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers in 1939
and one buried by retiring "M*A*S*H" cast members in 1983.
Komoroske said his school's capsule is "not the kind of stuff that's going to
move governments to discover world peace," but de Wilde, reached in California,
mused that it could be "a treasure trove of wonderful things that all of us have
forgotten."
To Sengel, however, the thrill is in the chase, and he thinks it might be
best to let it lie.
"Why do we need to look at it?" he asked. "Has anyone mentioned that
hallmark line of the 1960s? 'If you say you remember it, it means you weren't
really there.' "
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