June 2, 1999
By Sean Holstege
STAFF WRITER
LIVERMORE --- Tuesday's unearthing of the Centennial Time Capsule was arguably the most unceremonious ceremony the city has ever seen.
Everything was in place for a grand occasion. The mayor was there. The former mayor had flown in. The historians were there. The cameras were there. Everything was there - except the capsule.
They couldn't find it.
No amount of probing by metal detectors and poking by metal probes could find the thing.
All to show for the effort was a 2-foot-deep hole in the turf.
Who's to blame?
I want you all to know this is Barry Schrader's fault," joked Mayor Cathie Brown, who wasn't' too shy to wave a metal detector around. The machine elicited plenty of sharp whistles, but no canter.
Schrader, a former Herald editor, was part of the Centennial Committee that organized the time capsule
" If they can find land mines, they can find
something the size of a propane tank "
Centennial Committee
As he was musing, the jokes began.
"Well, the good thing
is: You could never tell we've been here," Public Works
Director Mike Miller said, nodding toward a lush lawn that looked
like it had been visited by an industrious ground hog.
"Now, Barry's got to find it.
Said Schrader of Miller, who last week had told him his work
crews had located something, "He left quickly in an unmarked
car."
City not alone
Now, the Only timeline that matters isn't 100 years but two weeks. Schrader's only comfort is that other cities lose their time capsules, too.
A writer in Atlantic Monthly, who had researched the subject, reported that a stack of articles about lost time capsules was 4 inches high, but the stack about the ones actually found was just a couple of angstroms. An angstrom is one-billionth of a meter.
The difference was, most of those capsules weren't buried 25 years ago. Stay tuned to the case of the disappearing time capsule.
in 1969, 100 years after the city was founded. Last week, be convinced the city to exhume the capsule, restore It and re-bury it somewhere else with a plaque.
He had figured that the memories of the Centennial Committee would succeed where technology had failed.
Wrong again.
"The collective memory of this bunch is miserable," local historian Gary Drummond muttered.
Much of the reason was that
none of the Centennial Committee was actually present for the
burial, which, incidentally, occurred five years late. They had
been on hand when the totem pole in Centennial Park had been
dedicated in 1974, two weeks before city groundskeepers, buried
the time capsule (somewhere) nearby.
Twenty-eight-year grounds keeper Roy Robustlli was one of them.
Obviously well-hidden
"Nobody wanted anybody
to know where It was because they didn't want somebody to dig
it up," he recalled of the uneventful event.
It worked,
"I will find It," he promised.
He had better. Schrader has a case at the Alameda County Fair reserved for the time capsule's contents. The fair starts in two weeks.
Don't be alarmed If you see work crews scouring the park with metal detectors. If worse comes to worst - again - Schrader. now a spokesman for Sandia National Laboratory, speculated that the labs could lend expertise from their land mine detection researchers.
"If they can find land mines, they can find something the size Of propane tank," Schrader figured.
Photo - Jay Solmonson
Livermore Mayor Cathie Brown gets help from former Mayor Gib
Marguth (left)
and Barry Schrader while searching for a time capsule in Centennial
Park
March 26, 2000