12-Year-old’s Time Capsule From 1949 Returned to Him as a Man in His 70s

A contractor who was renovating an historic home, stumbled onto a piece of personal history — a little boy’s time capsule from 1949 — so he spent his own time to return it to the now-old man.

Bill Gilbert was 12-years-old when he fashioned his time capsule in a Mason jar and hid it in new cabinets at the family home in Pueblo, Colorado.

He included a neatly typed note describing his family history and their pets — an Irish setter, two kittens and a bird — along with some stamps from his collection, an old coin, and a family photo.

Sixty-six years later, contractor Mark Knecht was renovating the basement of the house and discovered the time capsule. Realizing it might have a great sentimental value, he decided to track down the owner.

A quick Internet search led him to a relative of Gilbert’s who passed along the contractor’s phone number to the now 79-year-old man living in Seattle, Washington.

Gilbert was excited about the discovery and offered to pay the postage to have the time capsule shipped to him, but Knecht said he’d bring it in person.

It turns out, Knecht had grown up just a few miles from where Gilbert now lives and brought the artifacts with him on a trip to visit family.

Gilbert smiled as he held the contents of his time capsule again, for the first time since he was a 12-year-old boy.

http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/12-year-olds-time-capsule-from-1949-returned-to-him/