Oakland and Franklin Lakes Kids Create Time Capsule About Life This Year
This has been a year like no other.
Seemingly overnight, life as we knew it changed.
Some lost jobs. Many fortunate enough to still have their jobs are doing them differently.
Celebrations that would have brought families and friends together instead have been held via computers.
In-door restaurant dining was banned. Going to movies became impossible. Even hugging someone not in your household was deemed risky.
But Oaklanders have persevered, coming together as a community to uplift those who fell ill or who lost a loved one to the vicious virus. They showed support in various ways to our local first responders and to struggling businesses.
They stepped up to volunteer to shop for those—often strangers whose predicament was made known to the rest of us somehow, sometimes on social media--who were unable to go to stores to get what they needed.
And the children, our youth, displayed remarkable resiliency and spirit--adapting to the demands of a more restrictive life, and moving forward with the hope and optimism and faith that often live in the hearts and spirit of the young.
They learned to learn in new, often awkward ways as schools were shut and their home and their computers became the new classroom, and trusted as the adults around them scrambled to figure it all out.
They drew rainbows on posters and placed them on their windows to deliver messages of hope.
Now, thanks to a project launched by the Oakland-Franklin Lakes Rotary Club, the feelings and observations among Oakland and Franklin Lakes children about this unique time in our towns, indeed our world, are being captured for posterity in time capsules they have created for future generations (and even their own future selves) to read and look at and know what it has been like to live through and cope with the pandemic.
Their contributions will be bound and housed at the public libraries in Oakland and Franklin Lakes.
The idea for the project first occurred to the local Rotary Club president, Sherry Campanelli, as she heard laments about the pandemic and the way it had upended life and the everyday things people long took for granted.
She says she has seen people survive and power through other trying times and tragedies.
She recalled the times that U.S. military service people in war zones hoped they could make it back home alive, and hoped they could see their children again.
“We have gone through the Depression, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, epidemics and ecological tragedies," Campanelli said. "The one quality that stood out in all was our resilience and the lessons learned about what is truly important."
The time capsule, the Rotary hopes, will ensure that this particular period in the U.S. is not forgotten.
"We don’t want [future generations] to forget it happened,” Campanelli said.
“We need to hear from this generation, how do they feel about this?” Campanelli said of the children taking part in the project. “How is it impacting their lives? What are their thoughts? How is this time affecting them and their family? What does this time mean to them?”
Kids have contributed artwork, poems, letters.
“Every event in history has some kind of impact” on society, she said. “Everything that happens in our life forms who we are as people.”
(Elizabeth Llorente is editor of the Oakland borough newsletter and vice chair of the Oakland Communications Commission)