RICHMOND HEIGHTS — Though it was mounted along a well-trod walkway outside the emergency room, St. Mary’s Hospital officials had forgotten about the weathered plaque and the metal box encased in the wall behind it.
Finally someone took note of the sign and its message and called the hospital president’s office to ask: Are you going to open the time capsule this year?
So on Monday, before a group of elected officials, hospital staff and television cameras, SSM Health archives manager Scott Grimwood opened the metal container and removed dozens of artifacts.
Some were emblematic of the time they were stowed, December 1974. A candy striper’s hat, for instance, complete with bobby pins. A copy of The Washington Post with the lead headline: “Nixon Resigns,” and a Memorex reel audio tape of an interview for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, which stopped printing in 1986.
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But the capsule was packed with evidence of life at the hospital, and the contents ranged from the commonplace to the bizarre.
Some items were unremarkable: a set of crutch tips, a single latex glove, an electrocardiogram readout, a hypodermic needle (without a syringe), a plastic oxygen mask, a coronary catheter.
Others raised questions. There was a range of medical scans, which the archivists would need help identifying. There was a film reel of unknown contents and a sealed, stamped envelope addressed from an apartment in Richmond Heights to a house in Des Peres. A letter was visible inside, but the envelope was unopened.
There was also a mercury thermometer (“grateful that thing didn’t break,” Grimwood said) and a single capsule of medication.
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SSM Health archives manager Scott Grimwood holds up an electrocardiogram, which was sealed in a time capsule at St. Mary’s Hospital for 50 years, after the time capsule was opened on June 10, 2024.
“A pill. Not sure what the pill is. But it is a pill,” Grimwood said.
The box contained a yellow prayer card for health care workers, which read in part: “Lord I praise and thank You for the gift of another day. I wish to live this day in the conscious awareness of Your great love for me and to inspire this love and others in my ministry to the sick.”
And the box contained seemingly endless paperwork, from lab order charts to insurance forms (in triplicate), to a pay slip and multiple patient questionnaires.
“I can’t believe how many basic forms they put in,” Grimwood said.
There was a moment of alarm when Grimwood extracted a small canister with a yellow radioactive tag wrapped around it.
“Anybody from radiology in here?” Grimwood asked. “I’m going to leave that in the box. Can you call radiology for me?”
Grimwood said the small canister likely contains a tracer for medical scans, and is harmless.
A few minutes later, Grimwood pulled out an IV fluid bag with a visible trace of dried, brown liquid inside. It was unclear how or why it ended up in the box, but by the end of the event, the common belief was that it contained a medication.
“That was surprising,” said hospital President Steven Scott.
View life in St. Louis through the Post-Dispatch photographers' lenses. Edited by Jenna Jones.