Sherman Hospital gets unexpected blast from past

Sherman Hospital employees got a peek at history this week when they opened three time capsules sealed between 1950 and 1967.

Joy Jensen, a Sherman Health Foundation employee who was also around for the last time capsule, reminded officials it was behind the dated cornerstone on the northwest side of the Center Street campus, which was replaced a couple years ago by a new hospital on Randall Road. The old main hospital and the parking garage will be demolished starting in July and Jensen

wanted to be sure the time capsule was saved.

Dawn Stoner, project coordinator for Sherman Health, said they decided to look behind two other dated cornerstones just in case and found the capsules from 1950 and 1957, presumably packaged during previous construction on the hospital. Stoner said they were uncovered early in April but were opened Tuesday with help from representatives of the Elgin Area Historical Society.

“There is so much history in this building,” said Michelle Kustra, marketing coordinator for Sherman Health. “To be able to see it and capture it and hold onto it is really special to us.”

The capsules, small metal boxes, were not wrapped in anything, merely sitting inside the hospital walls. Nothing inside seemed to be damaged at all, and while musty, was well-preserved.

The capsules mostly contain paper items — newspapers, a phone book, hospital employee lists, magazines — but the one from 1967 also had a patch from the hospital auxiliary, a disposable sterile syringe and a pill bottle of empirin compound, which was taken off the market in the 1980s but was an aspirin mix that treated things like headaches.

A section from the October 1967 hospital newsletter talked about the ceremony installing the time capsule and the finding of a similar package from 1893 during demolition of a wing of the building.

“The items the box revealed were antiques, to be sure, much as today's items will be antiques to the finders,” the newsletter said.

Then-hospital administrator Harold Salmon sent a recorded message that employees can't listen to without a Dictaphone — a product the historical society is helping to locate. The recording is one of the few personalized items in any of the capsules.

Kustra hopes to have a Dictaphone on hand for the public unveiling of the time capsules — still being planned — and said the community will be invited to participate.

A capsule for the future may be prepared in July 2013 to mark the hospital's 125th anniversary, but Kustra said that is also still being preliminarily discussed.