By MARY BAILEY The Reporter

A birthday hat. A tattered t-shirt. Classroom pictures. A Spelling Bee trophy.

It might not seem like important things to some but to the dozens of people who gathered Thursday afternoon at the McCord time capsule opening, they were links to their past.

Audrey Williams, Director of the Albertville Museum, thanked the crowd who gathered for the time capsule opening.

“Thank everyone for coming today. I know most of you are like me, McCord is such a special place,” Williams said. “For me, I went there in the ‘90s and I know most of you were either teachers there or you went to school there so, it is such a special place. We just want to thank everyone for coming. We’re excited to see what’s in the time capsule.”

Debbie Galloway, who taught at McCord for 26 years, then spoke about her memories from the school and what the day meant to her.

“I’m so glad to see this turnout. This is just wonderful. I want to thank Audrey Williams, her board and her volunteers that have been a big part of making this happen. I want to also thank Gary George and his crew, Bobby Gregory and B.F. Schaffer, they drilled for two hours around the monument to get this thing up,” Galloway said.

“We are so excited for this day to come. I had the privilege of being part of the faculty for 26 years. I came in 1975 and I was there when they closed the doors in 2001.”

Squeaky floors. Broilers in the classrooms. Playing Oregon Trail in the computer lab in the basement, that also served as the lunchroom and tornado drill area. Yeast rolls from the lunchroom. The McCord Oak.

Galloway spoke of the fond things she and her fellow teachers remembered of the school that they held so dear.

“In the spring of 1999 we were celebrating 100 years that McCord had been located on this corner. Of course, there were a lot of changes over that time. But we wanted to do something really special to memorialize the fact that we had been here 100 years. So, each teacher put something special in the capsule. We put yearbooks, t-shirts, class pictures. Lots of things the students had written and poems,” Galloway continued.

“Today we come to pay tribute and strive to keep those memories going. And I hope in your heart that you are feeling the warmth of all we had at McCord. We want to pay tribute not to a building but to all the generations that have passed through McCord School. The thing that was so special about McCord wasn’t the building, it was the people. It was the staff. I mean from the lunchroom to the custodians. It was the teachers. It was the students and it was the parents. We were just a family.”

Jonathan Clark, who was in fifth grade in 1999, helped Galloway unveil the items inside the time capsule.

McCord Elementary School was built in 1899 and closed in 2001.

Contents of the 1999 McCord time capsule will be on display at the Albertville Museum for the rest of the May.