After the sale of the historic Memorial Hall from the village of Richmond to a private owner closed in a cash deal April 30, one especially important item belonging to the public still needed to be retrieved from the property.

It was a time capsule containing newspaper clippings, film, audio recordings and letters from Richmond community groups and elementary schoolers, plus much more, buried underground at the 1976 bicentennial of the U.S. declaring freedom from Britain in front of Memorial Hall.

The vault holding the pieces of history wasn’t set to be opened until 2026, when it would have been underground for 50 years.

But when it was extracted earlier this month with the goal of moving it to a new home for the next five years, it became obvious the container needed to be opened early.

American Wilbert Vault Corp. was the company that the village used for the attempted transfer, and it advised the village to drain the concrete vault.

“Unfortunately, the vault was lacking an interior water-tight container and the contents were laid out freely. This has resulted in the heart-breaking realization that the efforts to preserve the community’s precious memories were earnest, but not enough to protect the contents from being submerged in water for numerous years,” village officials wrote in a newsletter this month.

The weight of the concrete slab on top of the vault caused a crack in the time capsule, allowing water to flow inside and damage the items.

“The whole thing was pouring out water like a fountain. It was disturbing,” Richmond Village President Toni Wardanian said.

Village officials acted quickly to save everything they could. They cracked it open and began to pull the stacks of handwritten letters and other documents apart, and set out the items to dry on tables in Richmond’s public works facility.

So far, most of the documentation remains intact, with handwriting remaining legible, Wardanian said.

There were 102 community groups, consisting of members of all ages, that each deposited a bundle, folder or envelope full of what they believed would be of interest to Richmond’s residents of 2026.

Marge Stermer, a longtime Richmond resident whose son was in sixth grade in 1976 and submitted to the time capsule a contest-winning letter about the meaning of America, said she hopes to read it once it’s made public in 2026.

“I hope it’s not ruined. I would love to see it again,” Stermer said.

Her son, David Otto, now is a retired teacher in his 50s, she said.

“It’s such a shame because my son has often said I wonder if they are ever going to dig it up and move it. I haven’t heard a word. He’s asked over the years a couple of times,” Stermer said.

It is unknown if the letter survived the water damage, but Wardanian said at least 80% of the items have been salvaged. Rolls of film and an audio cassette in the capsule the village have been taken to a business that specializes in restoring such files, and officials will know if those can be saved within weeks.

Jeanne Doyle, owner of the Doyle’s Pub establishment just north of Memorial Hall, was unaware of the time capsule until the issue was made public. But she is glad officials are trying to save what they can.

“It’s really cool,” she said.

The plan is to eventually move the rest of the items from the public works garage into the Village Hall, where they will continue drying and eventually get re-organized, and again stowed away until it’s time to open it and inspect bits from the past in five years.

Wardanian moved one box of items into the Village Hall Friday, and said there are probably at least 10 more boxes of the capsule’s contents to haul from the public works facility.

She said the time capsule is unlikely to be buried underground again, but perhaps displayed in Village Hall, securely so it won’t be tampered with until it’s time.

She said the discovery of the damage was a bit of a silver lining, considering the sale of Memorial Hall, which had been owned by the village since it was built more than a century ago, was contested by dozens of people with ties to the Richmond area.

If the village had opened the time capsule to water damage at a festival in 2026, with a band playing and people anticipating the moment, they would have been more devastated to see the water damage, Wardanian said.

“There would have been people bawling their eyes out,” she said.

Now, Richmond Finance Clerk Kirsten Murphy is planning to reorganize the items as well as possible in the manner in which they originally were placed in the vault. Luckily for her, Richmond’s residents of 1976 included a ledger with an accounting of what was deposited that remains intact.

Officials are trying to keep the public’s eyes away from the items they have recovered as much as possible for now, so it’s still a surprise as to what was stored when the big reveal occurs in 2026.

“I think I’m most excited about seeing the grade school letters. Some are by people who still live here who are adults,” Murphy said.

Some of the young writers, however, failed to write their names on their submissions, Wardanian said, as grade-schoolers are wont to do.

“Maybe we will have some people claim, ‘That was me!’ when we put them in an online gallery,” Murphy said.

The village has already started encouraging residents to think about what items they would like to put into a time capsule in 2026 to be stowed until the 2076 anniversary of the nation’s founding.

As far Memorial Hall, its new owner, Sam Everly, has not yet submitted formal redevelopment plans to the village, but work to get it ready to improve has begun. He could not be reached for comment for this story, but Wardanian said she thinks he is working on a fast timeline with hopes of getting the property improved and reopened in the near-term.