North Shore Country Day gets pleasant surprise with time capsule find and reveal

Is it really what’s on the inside that counts? North Shore Country Day found out recently after discovering a 65-year-old time capsule while renovating its athletics facilities.

The time capsule was encased in concrete in the gymnasium’s walls when it was first built in 1960. School officials had no idea it was there, until an alumnus — John Darrow, a former NSCD board member who helped place the capsule when he was a student at the Winnetka school in 1960 — gave them the heads-up in the spring.

The school and the project’s construction crew collaborated to extract and open the capsule and examine its contents, which were presented to North Shore Country Day students and staff on Wednesday, Oct. 2, during an all-school assembly.

NSCD archivist Kenleigh Howard led the capsule project and the presentation on Wednesday, bringing up Darrow as a special guest.

Darrow told the students that he hoped they would find the capsule’s contents interesting and that the contents would help them think of items to potentially put inside of a new time capsule that NSCD is planning to install in the new Mac Gym.

“Think of what you want people to know about your school 75 or 100 years from now,” he said.

Howard showed photos of some of the historical items from the capsule, including a deflated football, pencil, yearbook and Newsweek magazine. Many of the about 30 items inside were pieces of student writing, including one from Darrow that he said he did not remember creating.

None of the contents was damaged, which was “very, very lucky,” Howard said.

The program on Wednesday gave students plenty of time to ask questions, as well — and they had plenty, such as “Did it smell bad?”, “Are you going to inflate the football?” and “What was your favorite item?”

In the coming weeks and months, North Shore Country Day students will play a role in the next time capsule to be placed in a more accessible location in the new facilities.

North Shore Country Day School’s original Mac Gym — dedicated in 1986 to longtime coach and educator Martin J. McCarty — was built in 1960 on the southeast corner of the school’s campus, directly south of the Music Institute of Chicago along Church Road.

The renovations to overhaul the facilities feature a 24,000-square-foot addition with training space, a fitness center, a lounge and more to support the school’s kinetic wellness and extra-curricular programming. Also included are fire safety and security improvements, HVAC system replacement, and accessibility enhancements, as well as new bleachers, according to previous Record reporting. The project is on track to be finished by December, NSCD officials said.

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