Back for a Moment to an October Day in ’41

For 61 years, Doug Lemon tried to remember what was inside a time capsule at Emery Park School in Alhambra.

Lemon, 70, was a fifth-grader at the school when the capsule was sealed into a cornerstone near the bottom of the auditorium doorway Oct. 7, 1941.

On Thursday, he watched with four other gray-haired Emery alumni as a maintenance worker chipped away at the concrete, revealing a blackened metal box wedged in a crevice. The tightly sealed box was pried open.

And there it was, on a list of students from every class, in loopy cursive--Lemon’s name.

“Wow,” he said, tracing the letters with his finger. He had signed the document as a 10-year-old, never imagining he would see it again.

Alumna Ariel Duggan, 81, scanned damp, yellowed copies of the Alhambra Post-Advocate, which were also in the capsule. Even though she left the school in 1932, the capsule brought back fond memories of Principal A.K. Kaufman, who was there when the capsule was sealed.

Duggan marveled at the headline of a newspaper that read, “Yankees Win Series 3-1.” Others laughed as they looked at an advertisement selling lamb shoulder for 27 cents per pound.

It was Lemon who informed current Principal Jenny Cheng of the capsule’s existence. A low brick wall had partially obscured the concrete plaque that read “1941.”

Lemon contacted Emery alumni to solicit donations for the excavation effort. He raised $410 to tear down the wall, retrieve the capsule and replace the brick. He also organized a reunion of alumni, to be held in April.

Cheng hopes to soon fill the empty hole with a 2002 time capsule.