School ready to dig up time capsule buried 25 years ago, but they can’t find it

By KEN MACLEOD

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    ATTLEBORO, Massachusetts (WBZ) — In the garden behind Attleboro’s Brennan Middle School, longtime teacher Dawn Greening is determined to solve a mystery.

“I am not stopping until it’s out of the ground,” she told WBZ-TV.

She’s talking about a seemingly forgotten time capsule — featured in the local newspaper back in 1997. That’s when the fifth through eighth graders here buried a box of their stuff behind their then new school.

It’s packed with things reflecting their lives at the time — like favorite T-shirts, VHS videos of themselves, stuffed animals, their schoolwork, a cassette tape of their principal’s morning announcements, and a Spice Girls CD.

Greening was a 20-something educator back then. “You know I’m a teacher,” she says. “It’s in my blood. And we made a promise to those kids.”

The promise — was to dig it up after 25 years and then share it with the grown students.

“We owe it to the community of Attleboro,” Greening says, “to follow through with what we say we’re going to do.”

The trouble is this — nobody remembers exactly where it’s buried — including Greening — who is the only 1997 staffer still there.

But when word of her effort hit Facebook — a small army began to form.

“I’m excited to help,” says Jenna Mercier — a Brennan alum-turned-parent. “It’s just history,” she said with her daughter in her arms. “It’s about reflecting on our childhood. It’s part of who we are.”

If former students can’t pinpoint the exact spot where the time capsule is buried, Greening is lining up a metal detector that might be able to ping the nails in the old wooden box.

And if that fails, there might be a student shovel brigade on the last day of school — principal willing.

“What we really need is some sort of machine,” says Greening, “that can x-ray the ground and tell us right where the box is.”

And in that box, she believes her old students will find a connection to a special time in their lives — that’ll be well worth the trouble.

“It was a simpler time,” Greening told us. “It was before 9/11 and the world was just different then. It’s a way to revisit time-gone-by that we don’t have anymore.”

Greening suspects the capsule is buried at a depth of two to three feet.

But she’s certain the unearthed memories will run much deeper.

“So, I just feel like it’s my passion to bring it back to them,” she says.

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