WASHINGTONVILLE — For three days they jack-hammered at the Washingtonville Middle School cornerstone, hoping to hit copper.
For decades there were rumors that when the building was constructed in 1932, a time capsule was placed in the cornerstone.
Those in the school district held their breath.
"They even a couple of times told us, 'Uh, I don't think there's anything in there,'" guidance counselor Sue Cooney said the workers told her, to which she replied, "Keep going, there's gotta be something in there."
And indeed there was.
Yesterday, the 75th anniversary of the school district, Cooney and her daughter, Lauren, a fourth-generation Washingtonville student, pulled out a rusting copper box from the hole drilled in the cornerstone and presented it to a crowd, shivering in the damp cold and craning their necks to see.
The lid was bent and damaged from the jack hammer.
"What's in it?" several in the crowd asked, their curiosity seemingly unable to wait for a quick search of the contents.
As Lauren Cooney held the box with both hands, Sue Cooney pulled out a newspaper, folded and yellowed, the Oct. 21, 1932, edition of the Central Orange Courier.
"What's the headline story?" one boy asked.
"Garage Owner Behind Ban on Lightless Parking," Sue Cooney read.
The crowd chuckled: Oh, such simple times back then.
There were other newspapers, too. The Oct. 28, 1932, edition of The Newburgh News, which cost three cents.
And the New York Herald Tribune, dated Oct. 29, 1932, with the headline: Hoover Brands Roosevelt Views as Dangerous to Nation's Future; Hailed by 100,000 at Indianapolis.
There were small wreaths of paper, on which there had at one point been messages into the future, now all faded and smeared. Purple ink splotches dotted all the newspapers.
"So, no notes, no phone number?" asked Jack Moore, a JROTC instructor in Washingtonville. "I thought there'd be a phone number; 'Hey, gimme a call when you find this.'"
And while they have just begun to inspect the time capsule of 1932, the eighth-grade social studies class is working on the time capsule of 2008 to be placed back in the cornerstone by the end of the school year. Some of the items might include a newspaper, a cell phone and an iPod.
Though it might be a challenge to find the student willing to give up his or her iPod.
"I'm thinking the lost and found at the end of the year," Principal Maureen Peterson joked. "Whoever didn't pick up theirs."
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