VIDEO: Senior project has a 30-year timeline

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Woodward-Granger senior Carli Major places the first shovel of dirt on the time capsule she created as part of her senior project. Buried in the W-G parking lot, the capsule is not to be opened until 2046.

WOODWARD — Seniors at Woodward-Granger High School are required to perform a senior project before they can graduate. Few, if any, will impact the community 30 years hence, but such is not the case for the idea Carli Major came up with.

“I wanted to be a part of something that would impact people in the future, and this is what I came up with,” Major said of her idea to bury a time capsule, with instructions that it not be  unearthed and opened until 2046. “I thought it would be a neat way for people then to look back and see the way things were today, which would be like us looking back (to 1986).”

Each project requires an adult sponsor or mentor, and Major turned to family friend Heather Salisbury.

“She gave me some ideas and helped get the project going,” Major said.

The original plan was to bury the capsule in the small city park at the northwest corner of Main and Third Streets, but Major said she turned to school officials when she received no reply to her requests from the city. Approval was quickly given, leading to the digging of the capsule’s home in an island of turf on the northern end of the school’s east parking lot.

Woodward-Granger student Carli Major shows the time capsule she is burying in the school parking lot as part of her senior project.
Woodward-Granger student Carli Major shows the time capsule she is burying in the school parking lot as part of her senior project.

With help from her father, Alan, and from younger sister Kaycee, Carli quickly had her spot chosen and the earth removed. The capsule was given a ceremonial burying, with the official deed to occur in a few days.

Major is waiting for the arrival of a plaque, which will be set in a concrete pad covering the hole. The plaque will bear the inscription “Woodward Community Time Capsule: Open in 2046.”

The shiny silver tube in which Major stashed her gifts for a future generation to unearth is called “Mr. Future” and was a design originally created by NASA.

Naturally, Major would not discuss what she had already sealed in the capsule, insisting it was “For those who open it” to discover the items and objects she had chosen to include as a snapshot of life in 2016.

“I am sure there will be plenty of changes around town between now and then,” she said. “Hopefully this will be fun for them to look at and see how things were in the past.”

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