Amanda (Maggetti) Brownell reads a letter she wrote as a fifth grader that described the music and entertainment from 1999. The letter was among the newspapers, school pennants, Beanie Babies and cassette tapes found in a time capsule buried 25 years ago.

Photo by Liz Carnegie

Eastpointe City Council Mayor Pro Tem Cardi DeMonaco Jr. finds his brother Adam’s name on a T-shirt signed by elementary school students in October 1999.

Photo by Liz Carnegie

EASTPOINTE — Toward the end of 1999, when there was talk of Y2K and what the future would look like in the 2000s and beyond, the Kantner Elementary School community found a way to immortalize the time period.

Students and staff filled a 3-foot-long time capsule with a number of items that were a staple of the 1990s. Amanda (Maggetti) Brownell was a fifth grader at Kantner when her dad Sam Maggetti designed and made the time capsule with PVC piping. The container was buried into the ground the same evening the school held a ceremony to dedicate its new marquee on Toepfer Ave.

“It was lit up,” Brownell remembered. “It was a big deal.”

On May 3, Brownell; her husband and daughter, Patrick and Amelia Brownell; and her dad met up with others from the former school to open the time capsule a quarter of a century after it was buried about a foot into the ground. The gathering brought the group back a quarter of a century.

“We all had a different memory of it,” Brownell said. “I remember all the grades got to put one or two items in it.”

When they began removing the items from the buried treasure, they found Pokémon cards, Beanie Babies, letters the students wrote, newspapers, a cassette tape with students offering greetings, a “Blues Clues” VHS tape, photos, student drawings, school pennants and more. Brownell, who graduated from East Detroit High School in 2007, found a letter she wrote 25 years ago.

“We wrote about the ’90s,” she said. “I wrote about the style of music, rap, and talked a lot about Backstreet Boys.”

Brownell said that because so many of the buried items were wet, they were thrown away, although Maggetti “saved some things.” The Maggetti family, which included four children, was always involved with the school district. Her mom even worked at Kantner.

Kantner eventually closed as a school and is now Love Life Family Christian Center, located at 17363 Toepfer Drive. At the time that Kantner operated, the district was known as East Detroit Public Schools; it is now Eastpointe Community Schools. Early in the day, Brownell got a chance to go inside the church.

“The owner of the church let me walk through. I was amazed. It was almost the same layout and some of the smells are the same,” she said. “We loved elementary school so much. We had the best teachers. It was a wonderful neighborhood and school. It’s sad the school closed, but we’ve been able to keep in touch through Facebook.”

Eastpointe City Council Mayor Pro Tem Cardi DeMonaco Jr. was a sixth grade student at Kelly Middle School in 1999 and does not remember the time capsule activity, but he came to the digging up of it May 3. When looking at the items, he found a T-shirt that Kantner students signed, including his brother, Adam, who was in third grade.

“I thought it would be fun to be here. It’s nostalgic. They were able to pull (the letters) apart. The writing was still legible. We’ll have to figure out how to play that,” DeMonaco Jr. said of the camcorder footage retrieved, who also pointed out that “Blues Clues” was a popular show in 1999. “Now we have ‘Bluey.’”

One item not found: a cellphone. The device hadn’t become a must-have yet. And the internet was just getting its feet wet.

“It’s interesting to see how we weren’t always connected to everybody at every moment of every day,” DeMonaco Jr. said. “You didn’t have a cellphone on you. You went all day without being able to be connected to somebody.”

DeMonaco Jr., a 2006 EDHS graduate, enjoyed his Kantner days.

“I had lots of good teachers,” he recalled.

One teacher, Mrs. Young, helped teach him how to read, and he has read to her students for March is Reading Month.

“I feel like it kind of went full circle,” he said.

Other than the COVID-19 pandemic, the City Council member feels the last 25 years “went by pretty quick.”