As the shovels hit only rocks, dirt and gravel for the first 6 inches on April 6 alongside a Keys West school, anyone older than 45 likely was remembering a much-hyped, live TV special in April 1986. Dramatic newsman Geraldo Rivera was going to open Al Capone’s vault and reveal its contents to the world. Millions of American families were glued to their living room televisions for hours, but with disappointing results — the vault contained only dirt and a few empty bottles.
The scene at May Sands School this week was nothing like that (other than the nagging worry that crept into my and others’ minds during the first inches of digging).
Instead, it became proof that Key West can still surprise and impress me after all these years.
April 6, 2026 was exactly 50 years after April 6, 1976, when fifth-grade students in a gifted program at a Key West school buried a time capsule in their school garden.
But how would they ensure it was retrieved and opened 50 years later?
The kids had a plan. It involved four identical letters, each typed on an actual typewriter and addressed to four different Key West officials.
Their letter demanded specific actions on a specific date, 50 years in the future, so the kids gave themselves an insurance policy — three of them, actually.
The students delivered four identical letters to responsible custodians around town. The then-superintendent of schools received an envelope. Then-Mayor Sonny McCoy received an envelope. The county historian at the public library, Tom Hambright, received a letter. And the then-principal of May Sands School received one from her students.
Typed on the outside of each envelope were instructions to open the envelope at 1 p.m. on April 6, 2026. That would mark exactly 50 years since the time capsule was buried, and directions for its retrieval were inside the envelope.
For years, the aging envelope hung pinned to a bulletin board outside the superintendent’s office at the school district headquarters. Superintendent Ed Tierney had inherited it from Theresa Axford, who had gotten it from her predecessors, dating back five decades.
Historian Tom Hambright, now deceased, also kept his letter filed in the vault at the Key West library, which is now headed by historian Corey Malcom, who inherited Hambright’s letter. The letter to the mayor’s office, despite being located in multiple city halls, also survived five decades. When Mayor Dee Dee Henriquez took office nearly two years ago, her assistant Dorian Patton marked the April 6 date on the mayor’s calendar.
“It’s amazing that three of the four letters survived,” deputy superintendent Amber Acevedo said at the ceremony to unearth the time capsule this week.
The students’ plan worked flawlessly and their time capsule was retrieved on April 6, 2026 at 1 p.m.
Charlotte Austin Sevilla was there for the burial in 1976. She remembered her class filling the time capsule, recording their voices on a cassette tape that was added to the capsule and sealing all the items in a large, glass mayonnaise jar from Mo’s Restaurant.
She was back in that same spot this past week, and was given the honor of reaching into the “vault” to retrieve items that hadn’t been touched for 50 years.
The included newspapers were dated March 23, 1976. The papers featured full-page cigarette ads and a news article announcing that authorities had located the car of Key West’s missing (and indicted) fire chief, Joseph “Bum” Farto.
There was also a cassette tape, which Malcom took back to the library, dried out and turned into a digital recording. The tape includes selections of popular songs from that era, including (my personal favorite) “Mandy” by Barry Manilow and “That’s the Way (I Like It)” by KC and the Sunshine Band.
“This is so cool and so much more exciting than Al Capone’s vault opening,” one viewer commented while watching the time capsule opening on Facebook Live.
Malcom is in the process of drying out the newspapers and other documents that were included in the time capsule. The school property — like much of Key West — was inundated with floodwater during Hurricane Wilma in 2005. That flood, plus 50 years of hurricanes and summer squalls, eventually permeated the time capsule’s seal and dampened, but didn’t completely destroy, the capsule’s contents.
All the items will be available for viewing in the Key West Library’s Florida Keys History Center, and will eventually be encased in a permanent exhibit.
Meanwhile, Key West students are assembling another time capsule, to be buried at the end of this school year — and to be retrieved in another 50 years.
