A trio of students in a science-fiction literature class at Waukegan High School in 1974 were asked to write an essay about what they thought life would be like in 50 years as part of an assignment.
At the time Jody Bishop Cruz, Gary Biggers and Barbara Carnahan White wrote those essays, they did not know they would be buried in a sealed time capsule along with other memorabilia from the era.
Their teacher, Jeanette Sosinski, intended for the time capsule to be unearthed and opened 50 years later. Things unimagined even as science fiction myths are now commonplace. White said computers in those days were as big as a room.
“Smartphones not only replaced computers (for some), but also replaced cameras, maps and rotary phones,” White said. “Medicine has evolved to diagnose and cure diseases never heard of in 1974. Communication and research (are) nearly instantaneous.”
Cruz, Biggers and White helped dig the capsule out of the ground and open it as part of the Class of 1974’s 50th reunion celebration Friday outside the high school’s original building in Waukegan, returning memories to more than 75 of their classmates and others in attendance.
Not the only Waukegan High School class to hold a reunion last week, some members of the Class of 1954 held a 70th reunion Thursday, where classmates in their late 80s reminisced and talked about the present.
Well sealed by a shop teacher with welding skills 50 years ago, the motor in the saw burned out before as someone tried to open it, eventually resorting to a mallet and chisel to finally reveal far more than the three essays inside.
Cruz, Biggers and Judy Justin Pozdol, a member of the Class of 1974 who helped organize the reunion’s weekend events, shared the contents of the capsule as they took them out. Some of their comments showed how things have changed.
“There’s a faculty roster in mimeograph,” Pozdol said, referring to a method of making multiple copies before copying machines were part of everyday office life.
A big smile came to Cruz’s face when he held up what looked like artwork and the unmistakable signature of Ray Bradbury beneath the drawings.
“He sent us hand-drawn doodles and signed it,” Biggers said. “This is really special.”
While looking at other items she helped take out of the capsule, Cruz found some other things she wrote 50 years ago dealing with events of the time and what her classmates had to say about them.
“This is something I wrote about Watergate. I asked people what they thought and I wrote it down,” Cruz said of events that led to the resignation of former President Richard Nixon in 1974. “Here’s an essay about legal abortion,” she added, referring to the procedure legalized by a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued the year before.
As Biggers picked up a copy of the “Student W World” student newspaper from 1974, he looked at the back page and remembered classmate Jerome Whitehead, who later played 11 years in the National Basketball Association.
“It says Jerome Whitehead, All-American,” Biggers said, as others commented on the basketball player’s accomplishments.
While members of the Class of 1974 talked about things contemporary to them a half-century earlier, Bob Zwicke was among 38 members of the Class of 1954 at Glen Flora Country Club remembering life in Waukegan nearly a generation earlier.
Zwicke said he was among the people who participated in the original Scoop the Loop in downtown Waukegan, when it was a time people met rather than the three-day civic festival it is now built around antique cars.
“It was all about our cars and our girls,” he said.
