A time capsule that was sealed in 1976 to celebrate America’s Bicentennial was opened on Monday at Orlando City Hall, days before the nation celebrates its 250th birthday.
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We went into our archives and found the story we wrote about the time capsule being prepared 50 years ago. Sentinel Star reporter Dorothy Madlee wrote the story, which ran on the front page of the local section with the headline, “Capsule Will Reveal More Than Memories To Future.”
Here is the story:
When they open the time capsule on June 14, 2026, they will know how it was in Orlando the year of their country’s 200th anniversary.
And some for instance, a small boy with dark curly hair who watched the ceremony with thoughtful, hazel eyes – will remember how it was on a special Monday at noon when bright new flag was run up beside Lake Eola, and the capsule was sealed.
A whiff of preservative gas will escape as air hits plastic-wrapped packages inside the 400-pound concrete capsule, with its wooden lining and its outer pebbling of red, white and blue.
Orlando cracks open five-decade-old time capsule for America’s 250th
They’ll find travel brochures and maps, bicentennial license plates and decals, copies of Monday’s Sentinel Star and other publications of the time, tapes of the day’s news; “More Than a Memory” book, and an invitation to last month’s “World’s Largest Party.”
By playing a tape, they will hear the voices of Orlando Day Nursery children singing and talking in 1976; they’ll read minutes of the Jan. 8, 1958, city council meeting, when Commissioner W. M. Sanderlin moved to ask H. Stuart Johnston of the Greater Orlando Chamber of Commerce to explain why snow was falling that day outside city hall windows.
They will read a letter addressed to the 2026 president of the Kiwanis Club of Orlando by his 1976 predecessor, William R. Martin, and Mayor Carl T. Langford’s proclamation – which he read during Monday’s ceremonies – setting the days from Flag Day to July 4 as a 21-day “salute to the flag.”
And the thoughtful-eyed boy, a man of 60 when the time capsule is opened, may tell his juniors how the sun came from behind a cloud and the colors shifted and shone as the 10-by-15-foot flag, gift of the Kiwanis Club to the city, ran up while the Naval Training Center band played the National Anthem.
And how the crowd stood, saluting solemn-faced as Martin led the Pledge of Allegiance.
“A piece of cloth it has your whole life wrapped up in it,” quoted William A. Thatcher, governor of the Kiwanis Club’s Florida District.
“It waves above us as it has for two centuries … it has witnessed deep divisions among our countrymen, but like the nation itself, the symbol has survived,” Emmett B. Peter Jr., chief editorial writer for the Sentinel Star, said in his dedication.
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America’s wars, the cold war, divisions over Vietnam, the resignation in dishonor of a American institutions, Peter said.
“Unsullied by the drama below, the flag flew on.
“Scandals, such as the one rocking the halls of Congress right now, come and go. Issues erupt, campaigns are waged … demagogues emerge, and radical groups, both right and left, sometimes seem to become so disruptive that one wonders if this stronghold of democracy can indeed survive.
“Somehow Americans, through the democratic process they so dearly love, manage to deflate the demagogues, negate the effect of the radicals, and the flag flies on.”
He cited restrictions on court coverage as a current threat.
Pictures: City of Orlando opens 1976 time capsule ahead of America’s 250th celebration
“If the press is no longer free, it will follow that the other freedoms we enjoy such as freedom of speech, of assembly, of religion will not be far behind.
Richard L. Nelson, Kiwanis Club president-elect, presided as civic organization heads placed wrapped mementos in the time capsule. Rolfe G. Arnheim, chairman of the Orange County and Kiwanis Club bicentennial committees, pronounced the ceremony ended.
The crowd drifted off, but the thoughtful-eyed boy walked up front where the time capsule was not yet sealed. He will remember in 2026 how two young women were bending over the big container, like housewives busy at last-minute packing.
“This package must go on top,” said Patty Dean, Martin’s secretary. Diana Carter, Arnheim’s secretary, shoved another plastic-wrapped parcel firmly into a corner.
“We wrapped everything last night,’ Patty said. “Dr. Jack Noon of the Florida Technological University physics department told us how stuff should be preserved. This will keep it as safe as it would be if it were laminated.”
“My mom uses stuff like that when she puts things into the refrigerator,” the boy remarked, “only it doesn’t look so neat.”
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