Cornerstone of the Past : Time Capsule Found in Home Gives Families a Special Link

They are trinkets from another era, the tell-tale artifacts of a personal history, a message in a bottle left to serendipity.

A tiny white porcelain doll. A blue glass marble. Two tattered, yellowing Herald Evening Express headlines from 1942. Several aging black and white photos, including one of a serious-looking young man with a monkey on his neck, kneeling to pet his dog.

For more than a generation, these items were sealed in a 1940s-era Durkee’s salad dressing bottle with a rusting metal cap that was cemented, crypt-like, in the wall of a garden shed in Los Feliz. When actor Richard Thomas’ family stumbled upon the mysterious cache while converting the shed behind their home into a playhouse last year, they inadvertently walked into the lives of Zella Wright, who left the bottle, and her family.

As a result, the time capsule has linked two Los Angeles families spanning four generations and a character-rich house that has been a treasured, almost mystical, cornerstone of their lives. For the young Thomas children, it has also meant intimations of mortality--the notion that others had once lived in their home and that one day they, too, will move on.

“I found it very moving, very touching,” said Richard Thomas, the small, colorful pieces of memorabilia spread before him. “Because these people had moved on. And how our lives can be reduced, theoretically, to these little artifacts, gives it a poignancy. . . .

“It’s all in this house. It was like meeting another family, in a way, that shared this house with us. And I’m sure they loved it as much as we do.”

Time capsules are considered a peculiarly American novelty that first gained popularity during the era of the nation’s 100th birthday in 1876. They are often left by governments or businesses to commemorate a specific event: a centennial, a new building or a World’s Fair.

Zella Wright, who died in 1979 at the age of 96, stashed one in a building on Beverly Boulevard when it was constructed to house her office, surviving family members recalled. They said it was common in the 1940s to inter time capsules in new buildings in Los Angeles.

Discovered by Handyman

Family members were unaware, however, of the cylindrical bottle Zella Wright left behind the house. It was discovered by the Thomases’ handyman in October.

“It was like a mystery story,” recalled Thomas, 38, an acclaimed theatrical and film actor who achieved initial fame as John-Boy on “The Waltons” television show.

“I’m sure it’s very much the same kind of response that archeologists have when they find something. You’re finding the artifacts of a whole life. And you wonder. You ask questions: What would these people be like? What does this represent?

“In my business, I spend so much time piecing together motives and past lives of characters that I play that I just was particularly fascinated by it.”

He was most taken with the glass marble, which, he said, “evokes to me times gone by.”

The four Thomas children were also intrigued, though they waxed more prosaic. “I wish they had left a dollar in there,” said Barbara, 7, one of the Thomases’ triplet girls.

Amused Pleasure

Zella Wright, whose family built the house in the 1920s, had identified her second son, Dean Bowler, herself, her second husband and his relatives on the back of the photographs. Bowler, now 75, with six great-grandchildren, expressed amused pleasure upon learning of the discovery from a reporter who located him at his Northern California home.

A photo in the time capsule showing a teen-age Bowler with his monkey, Boppo, and dog, Mike, brought back bittersweet memories. Bowler said he worked all summer to save $30 to buy his mischievous companion from a monkey farm at the old Ocean Park Pier in Santa Monica.

“The dog used to get the monkey and grab him by the head and just hold him,” Bowler recalled. “The monkey would just kind of hold still and get this funny look on his face, like, ‘How am I going to get out of this situation?’ Then he’d grab the dog’s ear and bite it so the dog would have to let him go. Then they’d chase each other around.”

‘A Lot of Company’

Boppo would also clench a piece of twine hanging in his cage between his teeth and spin himself like a top. One day, the family returned to find that he had strangled himself. Six decades later, Bowler got choked up about it all over again.

“I still love that crazy little thing,” he said. “He sure was a lot of company.”

The marble, meanwhile, apparently represents Bowler’s childhood collection. He explained that a miniature bourbon keg reflects his mother’s and stepfather’s stint in the wholesale liquor business in Boulder City, Colo. An unopened bar of soap from the Apache Hotel was a souvenir from that period.

The finger-sized porcelain figurine stands for Zella Wright’s cherished doll collection. “Whenever she went on a trip to a foreign country, she’d pick one up,” Bowler said.

His mother also included newspapers of the day in the time capsule. “Cards Win ’42 Series,” blared one Evening Express headline. Another front page announced: “Smash Jap Raid on Solomons. New Nazi Stalingrad Attacks Repelled.”

Eye for Irony

And she had an eye for irony. She enclosed a 1941 article on a speech by newspaper advertising executive Charles Arnn to the Junior Advertising Club of Los Angeles.

“I don’t believe we’re ever going to have normal times again,” Arnn prophesied. “Stay young. Don’t try to look back to the good old days, because they’re never coming back.”

Bowler said that squirreling away a time capsule was just like his mother.

“She saved a lot of items for nostalgia. She saved all my baby pictures and a lot of memorabilia. Every time they took a trip, she’d save all the match boxes,” said Bowler, who was starting high school when his family moved into the Bonvue Avenue home in 1928.

“Probably, she thought somebody would find it someday. She loved that house. That was her pride and joy. When we had to lease the place out to this screenwriter (during the Depression), it about broke her heart.”

Breathtaking View

The Mediterranean-style house with the breathtaking view of the Los Angeles skyline was built by Zella and John Dunlap Bowler, her first husband, an executive in a family publishing business.

The Illes-Ayars Publishing Co., which Dean Bowler and his brother, John Jr., later ran, produced Southwest Builder and Contractor magazine and the Daily Construction Reports, known as the green sheet, before it was sold to McGraw-Hill in the mid-1960s.

John Bowler hired noted architect Stiles O. Clements to design the 10-room house. Clements gave it heavy adobe walls, high-beamed ceilings, a front courtyard with an outdoor fireplace and fountain and numerous distinctive touches. It cost $25,000 at the time.

“When we first moved up, it was during Prohibition,” Dean Bowler recalled. “They had a secret compartment behind the bed in the main bedroom to store the liquor.”

Termite Infestation

After the Depression, Zella and Frank Wright returned to the home. It was during this period, when a termite infestation led to extensive renovations, that she apparently secured the glass capsule in the garden shed behind the house.

This was the only house that the Bowler family had all to themselves. Bowler said he still has a cardboard and pressboard model of it in his garage that he made from the original plans, and places it under his tree with its own set of lights each Christmas.

The Thomases had been married a year when Alma Thomas drove past the Los Feliz house moments after the “For Sale” sign went up. As soon as the front door opened, she recalls proclaiming, “I want it.”

That was even before they discovered the strange coincidences, such as the gargoyle figure in the front hallway with a mole on the same spot on its right cheek as Richard’s. Their discovery of Zella Wright’s hidden gift to the future further confirmed their attachment.

‘It’s Sad’

It also prompted Richard and Alma Thomas to suggest that their family make its own capsule. This troubled daughter Gwyneth, who insists that she will never leave the only home she’s known.

“I learned you have to make a time capsule every time you have to go away,” she said. “I know, but it’s sad. But you have to learn how to be brave. But I don’t want to be brave.”

Nevertheless, she plans to include one of her many carved turtles. Her sister Pilar says she’ll contribute a lucky silver feather given to her by her father. And Barbara will donate a soapstone bull that her father and brother brought her from China.

Richard Jr., 13, plans to add several coveted baseball cards: Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, Orel Hershiser, among others. But not hockey great Wayne Gretzky.

“Big brother doesn’t want to put in his Wayne Gretzky card because it’s so good,” Gwyneth said. “But you can’t take it up to heaven, can you?”

Will Include Dictionary

Alma Thomas will include newspaper headlines announcing President Bush’s 1988 election and the Dodgers’ World Series victory in October, a dictionary with the accepted language of the day and a Christmastime photo of the family at home.

She said she’ll also enclose the cover of the first issue of US Magazine in 1977--featuring a shot of Richard with Richard Jr. on his shoulders--and the 1982 People magazine cover of Richard and the 2-month-old triplets.

“It’s a time capsule, not a time suitcase,” Thomas interjected. “You have to travel light, even into the future. The challenge is to strip it down, to find the quintessence of each person.”

Zella Wright’s bottle and its contents, meanwhile, will also remain interred in the house.

“It’s a way of the family saying, ‘We no longer live in this house but, in some sense, we’re still here,’ ” Thomas said. “That’s why I would never take this away from this house. Because it doesn’t belong to us. I think it was given to the house.”