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Time capsule bares
memorabilia from '38 in Green Brook
By LARRY HIGGS
Staff Writer
GREEN BROOK -- The voices of school board members from 1938 spoke
Saturday through letters discovered inside a time capsule from the
demolished Irene E. Feldkirchner School.
About 100 people watched from bleachers in the Green Brook Middle School
gym as historian Rens Eelman used a power tool to cut open the small
copper time capsule. After he and school board President Gary LoPinto
gingerly bent back the lid, applause erupted from the crowd.
The first items pulled
out were two folded newspapers -- copies of the Plainfield Courier
News and the Newark Evening News of Feb. 19, 1938, a Saturday.
That was followed by three coins, two letters and a photograph of
the Feldkirchner School foundation.
The letters got the most attention. One was typewritten and
addressed to "the future taxpayers of Green Brook." The
other was dated 2 p.m. Feb. 21, 1938. It was handwritten at the
ceremony when the school's cornerstone was placed.
What school board President Frances
Bohl wrote in 1938 didn't differ much from the concerns of today's
parents and school board members.
"We have overcrowded
conditions, outside toilets and poor heating," Bohl wrote of
the two-room school replaced by the Feldkirchner building. |
STAFF PHOTO BY MATTHEW APGAR
From left, Alice Fisher, Hendrina LaFleur and Violet Boyle react
Saturday as contents of a time capsule from the demolished Irene
E. Feldkirchner School are revealed. One of the items in the
capsule was a letter signed by then-Board of Education member Alba
Fernstrom, Fisher's mother.
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She boasted that the new 1938 building
would have a classroom for each grade and cost all of $65,000.
Some people chuckled at the school's cost, ridiculously low by today's
standard. Even better, as the letter explained, the township received a
$29,400 federal grant and taxpayers paid the balance over 27 years at 4
percent interest.
The ceremony was a homecoming of sorts for Alice Fisher of Piscataway,
who heard the name of her mother, Alba Fernstrom, among the board
members who signed the letter.
"I expected something here," said Fisher, 83. "I realized
she was on the board."
Her friend Hendrina LaFleur remembered the building which Feldkirchner
School replaced.
"The Green Brook grammar school had outdoor toilets and it was a
wooden school, which was later used as the firehouse," LaFleur
said.
The ceremony also gave students and adults a chance to think about what
to include in a time capsule that will be buried at the new middle
school at a ceremony in September. Gabriella Marano, 14, said that's one
reason she came to the ceremony.
"I have a good idea what we'll put in it," she said.
The time capsule was saved by Eelman after the school was torn down last
June.
Before the ceremony, some students correctly guessed what the time
capsule contained.
"There would be pictures of the school or a newspaper," said
Steffainie Monteledne, 13.
"It could be anything, documents from that period or letters,"
said Chris Baldowski, 18.
For more photos, see http://www.c-n.com/picturestories/capsule/index.htm. |
