FORTY FORT – Holding the crayon drawing in her hand, Holly Kulp laughed at her art work.
The picture of her house on West Pettebone with two girls jumping rope on the sidewalk and a car parked in the driveway won third place in a contest held 25 years ago to celebrate Forty Fort’s centennial and was pulled from a time capsule Thursday at the fair marking the borough’s 125th anniversary.
“I remember the contest,” said Kulp. “It brings back memories.”
Back then she was Holly Blizzard and an 8-year-old in the third grade at Dana Street Elementary Center.
She’s since moved to Kingston and has a 2-year-old son, Kaiden.
Kulp, her son and parents, Gail and Chris Blizzard, who still live in the house, turned out for the ceremony at the fair at the Luzerne County Fields off Wyoming Avenue. The cylindrical capsule had been removed earlier from a monument on the grounds of the borough building about a mile away and unsealed.
The drawings provided a snapshot of the borough in 1987 from a child’s point of view and were included with essays, newspaper clippings, banners and flags and other memorabilia from the centennial. Forty Fort was recognized as an incorporated borough on Jan. 31, 1887, but has been in existence for more than 240 years.
The old material held up pretty well and many of the people on the anniversary committee had no idea what was inside the capsule.
“We were real surprised,” said Mayor Boyd Hoats Jr.
A new batch of material will be placed in the capsule, resealed and placed back into the monument on Sunday, he said.
The short ceremony took place on a mobile grandstand near the beer tent and at the opposite end of the fair from the amusement rides and vendors’ stands. Airplanes took off from the nearby Wyoming Valley Airport, passing over the people milling about the grassy field.
Planning for the anniversary began two years ago and Hoats recalled how he had help early on from Kristin Giordano. The two met while playing softball and will be married on July 6.
“She tells me she’s an event planner,” he said of their first meeting, and from there she agreed to get involved. “She was ready to go right from the start.”
Giordano acknowledged the event was a challenge.
“I never did something this big before,” she said.
But Giordano and Hoats credited the committee members and volunteers with pulling it off.
“It’s running itself right now,” said Giordano.
The celebration runs until Sunday with music nightly. A parade to the fields starts at 2 p.m. Saturday and fireworks are scheduled for 9 that night.