When the contents of Huntsville.s time capsule were recently pulled from their vault buried in the lawn of the
Madison County Courthouse, they were drenched in water. If not for the quick action of Huntsville Bicentennial Commission members, a half-century of history would have been lost. The contents, which included a Huntsville telephone directory, photos and a16mm fi lm reel, had to immediately be frozen and shipped to a restoration company in New York where the items would be slowly thawed. Over time, water had seeped into the 300-pound vault buried by the City of Huntsville in 1955 as part of its sesquicentennial celebration. The opening of the time capsule on Jan. 20 kicked off the city.s year-long bicenennial celebration. Now the items had to be quickly frozen to stop swelling and bacterial growth. Mary Jane Caylor, director of the Huntsville Bicentennial Commission, called the Marshall Center for help. The Environmental Test Branch and Structural and

These are valuable and important artifacts to the people who waited 50 years to see what was in the time capsule. I can.t say how much it meant to us to have Marshall help us with this,.. Caylor said. I knew I could trust Marshall. I knew if it could be done, it could be done at Marshall.

Jim Poff, with the City of Huntsville Landscape Department, transported the artifacts to Marshall.s Environmental Test Facility labs the next day in garbage bags. They were removed from the bags and placed in two environmental test chambers where they were frozen to minus 20 degrees Celsius. The chambers were staffed over the weekend to make certain there were no malfunctions, said Randy Stephens, technical assistant at the Environmental Test Facility. Then, Marshall team members boxed the artifacts in dry ice for shipment to New York. I witnessed a great example of government coming to the aid of, and serving the community,.. said Tim Thornton, operations manager for Qualis Corp., a Marshall contractor whose employees assisted in the effort. I am very proud of everyone involved in this teaming and the resulting
accomplishment.

It.s not everyday work for the environmental test facility team. But Stephens said it was not the fi rst time Marshall had been called on to help restore wet documents. When a Civil War museum in Selma flooded, its directors asked the Marshall Center to help remove the water from thedocuments while maintaining the integrity of
the items. Marshall developed this process after the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986, Stephens said. Shuttle hardware recovered from the ocean fl oor was sent to the test facility, placed in a vacuum chamber to remove the water, then moved to a humidity chamber to replace some of the moisture and to make the items pliable again. It was absolutely phenomenal what Marshall did for us,.. Caylor said. Accepting the
artifacts was a great contribution to the community and to the Bicentennial Commission...

The writer, an ASRI employee,