KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Copper-etched photographs of World War I generals and three former presidents, perfectly preserved newspapers from the 1920s, old Kansas City Chamber of Commerce literature touting Kansas City’s status as an agricultural, rail, and mail-order hub — those were among the artifacts retrieved earlier this year from a time capsule that was sealed inside the walls of the Liberty Memorial a century ago.
The artifacts were unveiled publicly Wednesday for the first at the National World War I Museum and Memorial before students from three Kansas City-area schools and history buffs from Leavenworth were joined by an online audience.
“Without further adieu, my friends, the 1924 time capsule,” Museum President and CEO Matthew Naylor said as a red curtain opened to reveal a table with a few dozen items that were sealed up more than a century ago.
Three years after a November 2021 groundbreaking, Kansas City civic leaders placed the time capsule inside the Memorial’s wall in 1924 with instructions to open it a century hence.
“Here we are as they had planned 100 years later to open this capsule,” Naylor said.
Months of effort went into the unveiling, starting with retrieving the time capsule.
“It was very difficult — 18 inches of concrete and limestone, so it was not easy,” Chief Curator Christopher Warren said. “There was no door to open and pull the time capsule out.”
Next came the painstaking process of opening the time capsule, which involved the KCPD Bomb and Arson Unit to make sure the nitrate film of the 1921 groundbreaking didn’t explode or catch fire upon being unsealed and several dozen staff hours carefully unwrapping each item.
“Everything was in pristine shape, which made it easier,” Warren said. “But it’s a very tedious and slow process. That’s why we chose not to do that in front of the public because they would get very bored with those types of things. … There was paper wrappings on everything with gold seals, which kept everything in great shape, but you have to actually take a razor blade and get under those gold seals — very meticulous. You don’t want to just tear them in half, because that’s part of the objects as well — the wrappings and what they used for wrappings back then tells us something.”
Museum staff saved three items for unveiling Wednesday.
One package contained a tube of seeds, another revealed the copper Kansas City Star printing plate from the groundbreaking and, finally, there was a letter from Gen. John J. Pershing, the Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I — or at least there was supposed to be a letter from Pershing, who was from Laclede, Missouri.
Instead, there was a note explaining that time-capsule organizers had been unable to make contact with Pershing, who had retired and was traveling through Europe.
“Ladies and gentlemen, do you know what this is? This is a 100-year-old out-of-office memo,” Warren quipped. “Gen. Pershing was on vacation but will respond to your email when he returns to the office.”
Cooper Ford, a sophomore at Lee’s Summit High School, was invited on stage when the printing plate was unveiled, getting an up-close-and-personal look at a historical object unseen for a century.
“It was kind of cool,” he said. “I thought it was going to be on paper or something. Seeing it on metal or copper or whatever was interesting.”
The National World War I Museum and Memorial plans to put the artifacts on display in a gallery on its lower level.
Students from Lincoln College Preparatory Academy also took part in the unveiling along with several dozen students from Pershing Elementary School in St. Joseph, including Abiel Kokobe — a fifth-grader who was picked to ask a question.
“I was very nervous,” said Kokobe, who asked how much the artifacts were worth. He said, “It took me about five hours (to come up with a question) ... because I was sitting at my desk at home trying to figure out a good question.”
What would Ford put into the time capsule?
“I’d probably put a cell phone so they could see how much technology has changed or something,” he said.
Kokobe, a fifth-grader from Pershing Elementary in St. Joseph picked something more personal: “I would love to put some of my stuffies and some of my notes that I wrote about my childhood memories and some pictures that I drew when I was a little kid.”
Surely, a photo of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce would have to be included as well, right? And perhaps one will be now that the Museum has launched a campaign to create a new time capsule, which will coincide with the Memorial’s centennial in 2026.“Entertainment is a big part of it, a big part of our lives, so we’d certainly want to have representative pieces from the Chiefs and Sporting, the Current and the Royals. But also, we do it thematically — maybe something that talks about politics of the day, maybe something that talks about community or faith. So, we take individual representative pieces that tell the story of Kansas Citians in 2026, when we actually do the time capsule.”
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