School Board member Brad Etheridge kneels behind a marble block engraved with the year 1939 and the words, “Dedicated To Our Youth.” The time capsule is the rectangular copper box in front. The box is a bit weathered from the passage of 81 years.

By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                A community treasure was recovered in June from the remains of what was once Williston High School.

            Discovery of the treasure was a long shot.

            Williston farmer Arthur Sandlin happened to stop by the school to take photographs of the buildings being demolished to send to his former classmates.

            Sandlin, after parking his truck, was approached by a man operating an excavator used to tear down the buildings. He told Sandlin he might want to take a look at something he found.

            The excavator operator showed him to a block of marble engraved with the date 1939 and the words “Dedicated to our Youth.” The excavator operator had pulled it from a demolished block of concrete at the entrance to B Building.

            Sandlin asked the excavator operator to place the block in the back of his truck. When the tailgate wouldn’t close, the excavator operator rolled the block over, revealing a copper box embedded in the marble.

            The box, as it turned out, was an 81-year-old time capsule left by community leaders.  It contained a Bible from the 1939 time period, two 50 cent pieces, a newspaper, and two letters from students.

            Unfortunately, the time capsule was exposed to nine inches of rain on the day it was removed from its hiding place.

            School Board member Brad Etheridge said the box wasn’t waterproof and the papers inside were folded and became wet. He said the letters were written on notebook paper and it’s not clear whether the paper can be completely restored.

            “I could read in the newspaper; it said something about Hitler during that time,” Etheridge said.

            An alumni group is storing the contents of the time capsule in an undisclosed location and reviewing its options for the materials and the marble block.

            The fact that the marble block and the embedded time capsule were found at all was a gift to the community.

            “It’s a miracle that it wasn’t thrown in a roll-off dumpster and hauled off like the rest of it,” Etheridge said.

            Etheridge’s mother, Nancy Etheridge and DeeDee McLeod had spent a good bit of time researching the long-held belief in the community that a time capsule was buried somewhere on campus. They narrowed down the hiding place for the time capsule to a landscaped concrete block at the base of the B Building stairwell, but they couldn’t be certain.

            Nearly two years ago, Brad Etheridge, Mike Owens, and a school board employee cut into the concrete block below the stairwell at B Building using a metal concrete saw. Nancy Etheridge and Deedee McLeod were watching. The information gathered by the two women indicated they were sawing into the resting place of the time capsule. As it turned out, their information was accurate but they didn’t find the time capsule that day.

            “Two years ago we spent several hours with a concrete saw. We had our hands all over it but you can see on the bottom side it was actually concreted in the wall solid and no way to see it,” Etheridge said.

            Etheridge said an alumni group is discussing what to do with the time capsule and the block. Where should it be placed? He said it looks like the box was handmade and “hand-beaten in there.”

            “There’s a lot of discussion with the alumni group. It has generated a lot of ideas. They raised some money when we were building the new school. They still have some funds available,” he said. Etheridge said his mother and McLeod headed the effort to provide landscaping for the new school, add paver blocks leading to the flagpole and install benches, and preserve old photos from old WHS.

            Etheridge said he has tossed an idea to the alumni group for preserving the marble block and a time capsule for future generations. He doesn’t know how much support it might have.

            “I think it would be really good if we put a Bible back in it, two letters this year during COVID-19, a newspaper about COVID, two 50 cent pieces the same way they did 80 to 90 years ago; close it back up and put it in front of the school, concrete it back in and 100 years from now somebody can try to figure out where we put it,” he said. “We’re going to build a more modern time capsule in it, I think, one that probably doesn’t hold moisture.”

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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt July 29, 2020; Posted July 29, 2020