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Residents and special visitors to Nome poured into the Richard Foster Building Thursday to open a time capsule sealed in 1990. It was created as part of the library’s summer reading program that year.
Dee McKenna served as Nome’s Library Director from 1979 to 1997. In 1990, she ran the library’s summer reading program with help from her assistant Joe Davis. The theme that year was traveling through time, which served as inspiration for the time capsule.
They found a large metal cylinder and invited kids in the reading program to bring items from home to put in it.
“The members of the reading program brought things from home to put in that time capsule, and to be honest, I do not recall what they are. There might be some photographs, there might be some fingerprints,” McKenna said.
With some help from local airline, Bering Air, the capsule was filled with nitrogen and sealed up. It made a few stops across town over the decades that followed, finally coming to rest at the city’s Public Works Building. But in 2023, the building caught fire.
“The first thing that was said is, oh my gosh. What happened to the time capsule? Is it there? Is it? Okay? Where was it? We asked people to look for it. We can't find it,” McKenna recalled.
McKenna said it wasn’t until she heard from the museum’s Director, Cheryl Thompson, that her hope was restored.
“Cheryl Thompson and Marguerite [La Riviere] and a few other people, they went and started looking for it. It was finally found after the fire in a freezer van,” McKenna said.
The time capsule eventually found a new home at the Kegoayah Kozga Library, where it remained until Thursday’s grand unveiling.
The Richard Foster room next door to the library buzzed with energy as people filled nearly every seat in the room. Excited kids filled the floor just feet away from a table at the front of the space. Nome City Manager, Lee Smith, opened the event by thanking everyone involved.
“Folks that have worked really really hard on this, our library folks everybody raise your hand, you can do this come on now,” he said to cheers from the crowd.
Nome resident Joseph Fullwood took part in the 1990 reading program. He was given the honor of retrieving the items from the capsule.
“We also have Winnie the Poo, we have a pencil. What does the pencil say? Oh, it says 'best witches',” Fullwood said as he pulled items from the capsule.
Also inside were magazines from Russia, clothing and children’s toys. In the future, the library plans to keep the items on-site and make them available for viewing.
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