By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

LAPLACE – In the year 2062, students at St. Joan of Arc School in LaPlace will get an idea of what life was like for present day students thanks to a large time capsule that was buried on campus Tuesday morning as part of the school’s 50th anniversary celebration.

Principal Larry Bourgeois Jr. said each student contributed pages set in binders divided by grade level. He said the older classes wrote essays about themselves and life at the school, while the younger classes drew pictures of themselves and their families. Bourgeois also said each of the school’s clubs contributed a memento to be put into the hard plastic box adorned with the school’s seal.

One of the crown jewels of the capsule is the school’s 2012 Catholic School Athletic League basketball trophy, which was won earlier this year.

“It was the fifth championship the school has won, and the boys wanted to do something special with it,” Bourgeois said. “So they all got together and decided they wanted to add it to the time capsule.”

Bourgeois said the capsule also contains artifacts from the Dominican Sisters, an order of nuns who started the school in 1962. The sisters are still involved in many school activities.

“Some of the Dominican sisters were afraid that the order may not be around in 50 years, so they wanted to contribute,” Bourgeois said.

The burial was supposed to take place Friday morning, but bad weather postponed it until Tuesday. Bourgeois said the students went ahead with a ceremony in the gym that included a proclamation from the parish. The capsule was lowered into a 4-foot deep hole and buried by a handful of eighth-graders.

A marble placard will cover the plot.