The Book of Me, Part 8

This great series of blogging prompts comes from Julie Goucher at Angler's Rest. This week:

"This week’s prompt is in two parts and you have several choices.

The prompt is Time Capsule

1.      You can choose who to create the time capsule for as that will influence what you put (or would put into your time capsule)

2.      The creation of a time capsule

a.       you can do this in the literal sense or

b.      you can simply write what you would place into your time capsule and why. It is much more fun to create though!

• You may choose to create a time capsule for your children, or a niece/nephew, for grandchildren – A physical item that you will give to a named person.
• Why have you chosen that person and when do you intend for them to have it?
• You may choose to create a time capsule of your home and leave it for someone in the future to find.
• You may want to create a time capsule relating to an actual event or anniversary
• If you create a physical time capsule, what did you choose to use as your capsule and why?"

Wow.  I have many people I would remember this way, but I think I'll choose my father, Arden Packard.  He had no middle name.  As I am away from home, at graduate school, and all my mementoes of my father are back home, I will do the "virtual" time capsule rather than a real one.  One day perhaps I will do a real one. In fact, I probably would do two of them: one for my grandson and one for my nephew Evan, so both of them could have a better idea of the man their great-grandpa and grandpa was.

As I am doing only the "virtual" time capsule, I have no idea right now what I would use for a container.  I would select something fairly sturdy and eminently portable and storable.  I'll have to think about that.

I would put into the capsule copies of several photographs I have. One is of him wading in the Pacific off the coast of California, where he was born.  He was about three or four years old in the picture. Another would be him in his Naval Academy midshipman's uniform on leave back home, with his mother and father.  Another of him as a very handsome Navy lieutenant.  And more.

I would also put in a copy of his birth certificate and a copy of his Navy service record from the National Archives' National Personnel Records Center.  I would use paper copies rather than media such as a CD-ROM, because as time goes by, the items on the disk would fall victim, I'm sure, to "platform creep" and end up unreadable by the machines of the future.

I would have to distribute between the two capsules the medals my father earned in World War II.  Or maybe I would just take photographs of them.  I would put in an explanation of each one, what it was for.

Finally, I would put in copies of an essay detailing my scant memories of him, along with things my mother told me about him.  I say "scant memories," becuase I had just turned seven years old when he died.  Genealogy has helped me get to know him better, including the fact that he was fluent in Spanish, which is also my second language.
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