The impending closure of Bessie Hoffman Elementary School in the Lincoln Consolidated school district next week led to an opening this afternoon.

A team of former students and present faculty dug up a time capsule buried 4 feet under the lawn. It had waited near the 45-year-old building’s entrance since 2000.

After 25 minutes of sweaty toil on a warm, humid day, the blue plastic bucket and its shroud of ragged black garbage bag was exhumed.

Principal Carol Ann McCoy oversaw the bucket’s opening in the gymnasium before a large crowd of alumni, current students, faculty and parents.

“I know I placed something in it, but I have no idea what,” said Jake Ryan Thomas, currently a Lincoln High School sophomore. “I’m waiting for a Pokemon card.”

Before the lid came off, three students performed the traditional Bessie Hoffman rap number. Everybody cheered, “We grow them big at Bessie.”

Nicole Blanton, who graduated tonight from Lincoln High, was a second-grader in 2000 when she also put some long-forgotten memento into the capsule. She reached in and drew out a smelly paperback copy of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

Indeed, novelist J.K. Rowling had once again left people gasping—but in an entirely new and unintended way.

Blanton reeled away from the capsule.

“It’s a good experience to put items in as a group into something and come back years later and try to remember what exactly you put in and how it felt at the time,” she said.

The capsule continued to produce. There was a box of crayons, which appeared to have held up well. Some photos, a class album and printed stories from Mr. Dunkelberger’s class also were extracted.

Along with current principal Carol Ann McCoy, Ed Dunkelberger was one of five teachers who advocated in 1995 for Bessie Hoffman’s signature multi-age program. It combines children from kindergarten through grade 5, often in the same large classroom.

Students called it the McDunk room.

The multi-age program is divided into lower, middle and upper “houses,” each with two grades. The district will keep the multi-age program and move it to Brick Elementary.

Bessie Hoffman, which opened in 1965, will host Lincoln’s online courses and a new district-sponsored cosmetology program.

The school is located at 50700 Willow Road, in the extreme southwestern corner of Wayne County, at the Lincoln district’s farthest extent.

The location is in Sumpter Township, which once had its own school district. It was absorbed into the Lincoln and Van Buren districts.

The school’s namesake, Bessie Hoffman, is memorialized on a plaque in the building’s entryway. She was born in 1888, arrived in Sumpter in 1941, and worked as a social worker in Detroit.

Hoffman was the first black member of the Sumpter school board and served 13 years.

“She always felt intelligence, reason and example were the ways to accomplish things,” the memorial says.

Hoffman helped to launch the district’s PTA. She lent her influence when the first black teacher was hired.

Even after becoming ill, she continued to attend school board meetings.

“The people put me here to do a job,” she said. “And I am going to do it as long as possible.”

She died in 1962.

Jahr-Anderson Associates designed the building, and construction began in 1964. Bessie Hoffman Junior High opened the following year.

After Lincoln Consolidated acquired the school, it was changed to an elementary.

In addition to the memorial, another powerful symbol adorns the entryway. The silvery steel representation of a ship captain’s wheel lies flat against the brick wall.

The ship’s name is cut out in the center: “S.S. Bessie.”

Ronald Ahrens is a freelance writer for AnnArbor.com. Reach the news desk at news@annarbor.com or 734-623-2530.