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BETH N. GRAYSuncoast Elementary alumni, now Class of 2003, return to unearth mementos but have forgotten where they buried them.
SPRING HILL - For a while Tuesday, it appeared the alumni of Suncoast Elementary School would dig only into their graduation cake.
Some members of the Springstead High School class of 2003 had returned to their elementary home to unearth a time capsule they had buried as fourth-graders in 1994-95. But there was a problem.
Time was running out on the 10:30 a.m. ceremony when principal Jean Ferris admitted: "We're in the process of finding the time capsule."
With 30 minutes to go, she added, "We've been looking forever. We had a metal detector, but then we figured it was probably plastic."
School staffers had searched through old yearbooks for clues as to where the capsule might be in the school courtyard.
"There's been a lot of construction since then, so the topography is a little different," Ferris explained.
A fence had been added, trees planted, and the original markers for the capsule had vanished.
"Ten years is a long time," the principal said.
Head custodian Willie Martinez worked the courtyard with a 4-foot probe while Bill Celmer poked with a garden fork and Bob Huss put his foot to a shovel. Huss periodically exchanged the shovel for a rake in an attempt to repair what had taken on the appearance of a badly plowed field or a convention of burrowing moles.
The custodians last week tapped into a capsule planted for retrieval in 2004, and they had no trouble last year targeting the first capsule that had been buried at the school.
Teacher Barbara Punchak, who initiated the burial project when Suncoast first opened, lamented that no map had been drawn and that all of her photos from the era were packed away.
As classmates began to gather in the office, looking out on the site, Kelly Jensen and Alison Stine, both 18, couldn't recall the location.
Noting the scattered digging, Mollie Mahoney, 17, offered: "It was closer to the building."
And that's exactly where Huss' shovel found the sealed 5-gallon white plastic paint bucket, emblazoned with "2003" in green, at 10:40 a.m.
Punchak and her former students were eager as the lid was pried off.
"I really wasn't sure what we put in it," the teacher said. But she recalled writing "something about each and every one (of the class members)."
Alison didn't remember the capsule's contents either. "That's why we're here," she said.
Kelly remembered writing, among other things, "what we wanted to be when we grew up."
She's been through so many career ideas, she said, but now she's planning to become a zoology teacher. That was "definitely not" in her mind as a fourth-grader, she declared.
Marybeth Dick, 18, who won the Suncoast Parent Teacher Association $250 scholarship this year for an essay about her school years, recalled drawing a picture of herself for the time capsule.
Punchak retrieved two plastic bags from the bucket, which was sealed and contained packets of selica gel and dried lima beans to keep moisture at bay.
She removed and handed out the treasures: triple-folded sheets of business stationery carrying each student's class photo on the front, and inside their favorite color, snack, indoor and outdoor activity and more.
Kelly giggled over her favorite snack from that long-ago year: Dunkeroos. Other students expressed embarrassment over their fourth-grade pictures.
Then Punchak dug out several sheets of yellow legal paper bearing her own notations on each of her former students. She choked up as she began to read to herself, then scurried indoors for a tissue to dab the tears. Returning, she motioned to David Murray, 18, and wordlessly pointed to her inscription of him: " . . . you loved to talk in line."
Then there was "Mollie by golly."
Punchak promised to make copies of her words for those gathered. Eleven of the students posed gleefully for a photograph with their time bucket.
Then they dug into the cake.
Principal Ferris said there should be no future confusion over the location of the time capsules.
"We buried (a time capsule) last year," she said, "and we have a map in the school safe."