East Celebrates Centennial with Time Capsule Ceremony
On a presumably cold day in January of 1912, the year Oreo cookies debuted and the Titanic sank, some 700 students and faculty marched from a downtown campus that was later consumed by the MacVicar Freeway to the site where East High School still stands to start classes at what was then a brand new building. But first they paused outside for a ceremony to mark the occasion.
Yesterday another ceremony was held at that very same spot to reenact the recent retrieval of a time capsule that was tucked away a century ago in the building’s cornerstone. Beneath a canopy of old oaks that may have been saplings when the home of the Scarlet first opened its doors the school band played the fight song and an assembled crowd that was an appropriate mix of alumni and current students chanted along. Governor Terry Branstad came over from his office nearby at the State Capitol and spoke briefly. Notable among the alumni was Mary Shipway, a member of the class of 1931 who was born in 1913.
The ceremony and a banquet that followed later in the day are two of the keynote events during Alumni Week at East. As Governor Branstad noted, the school’s alumni association is reputed to be one of the strongest anywhere. During the banquet 63 members of the Class of 2012 were awarded scholarships that totaled in excess of $100,000, thanks to the group’s efforts.
It’s not easy to fit a century’s worth of change into the nutshell of a copper box and solder it shut for posterity. Most of what was salvaged among the East artifacts could best be described as remnants – of a silk 46 star American flag, an East High pennant and a Bible among other tokens of bygone times. Phonographic recordings of the 1912 student body yelling school cheers were long since melted and various other documents were badly decomposed. There were some intact Des Moines newspapers, priced at a penny, like the one with the headline ballyhooing East’s defeat of West High, the forerunner of Roosevelt, in football by a score of 24-2. Some things never change; that same newspaper had an ad announcing that Younkers was having a sale. There was a calligraphic “History for the building of the new school” recorded on parchment. It detailed how East students circulated petitions and even helped transport voters to the polls in support of a bond issue to finance construction.
With an eye toward the century ahead a new box of mementoes will replace the first one as part of Homecoming festivities next fall. Suggestions are being taken now for what should be included in the next batch. Something in recognition of the school’s recent state titles in girls’ athletics would seem fitting. A basketball probably wouldn’t fit but there ought to be room for a softball!
Tens of thousands have received their diplomas at East and several hundred more will join the ranks of graduates later this month. That collective Scarlet spirit is as unsinkable as the items in the time capsule were perishable; as enduring as Oreos!
You can especially feel it during Alumni Week at the school, like a ghost released from a sarcophagus full of remains.
IT IS – EAST HIGH!
