History mystery: Kent State seeks whereabouts of 1960 time capsule

KENT, Ohio (AP) — Kent State University officials might need a time machine to find out what happened to the school’s 50th- anniversary time capsule.

As they prepare for their centennial in 2010, they’d like to know the fate of the capsule for 1960. They have found records of it in university archives, the school newspaper and the yearbook.

But where, or even whether, it was actually buried is another matter.

Even tracking down three participants in the 1960 celebration planning hasn’t yielded an answer. They weren’t sure what became of it.

“There was no documentation of a burial,” said Pamela Jones, an academic-program and student-development coordinator leading a similar project for the university’s 100th anniversary.

This time will be different. The school plans to bury a stainless-steel time capsule on campus next year during homecoming, and Jones is taking care to document her committee’s work in the university archives, the architect’s office and student-run media.

The school bought the 2010 capsule for $3,600 from Time Capsules Inc. of Prospect, Pa.

Tom Marak, owner of the company, said publicizing the location of time capsules has become a common practice.

His customers usually “make sure there’s a monument or a cornerstone or that the time capsule’s in a vault.”

But that wasn’t always the case in the past, and he said many time capsules have been lost to the ages.

The new Kent capsule likely will have a marker so a future generation can unearth it to find items that could include cell phones, laptops, textbooks and athletic uniforms used by current students.

Jones said it’s unlikely vandals would take it because the capsule will be several feet underground, possibly under concrete, and it weighs 178 pounds.

Meanwhile, the university is still asking for any information that could lead to the whereabouts of the 1960 capsule, if it exists.