Brentwood Morning Rotary and City Unearth Time Capsule

Published on October 06, 2025

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. – On a pleasant Sunday afternoon, members of the Brentwood Morning Rotary Club grabbed shovels and began digging in front of the John P. Holt Brentwood Library. It only took them a few minutes to locate the metal box, which had been buried near the parking lot 25 years earlier.

Brentwood Mayor Nelson Andrews dropped his shovel and pulled the box onto the grass. The Millennium Time Capsule had sat silently underground for more than two decades, and now a crowd gathered while a Brentwood Public Works employee pried open the rusty box.

“When we buried this, the year 2025 seemed a lifetime away,” Teresa Beard, a past president of the Brentwood Morning Rotary, said. “The year 2000 brought much excitement, some fear of the unknown and much anticipation. Our club wanted to mark the moment, not only for ourselves but for the City of Brentwood and many of our partner organizations. That’s how the time capsule idea was formed.”

The box, opened for the first time in 25 years, released a musty odor. Beard held her breath and removed the contents, setting them on folding tables. The time capsule contained photo albums, a Brentwood 2020 Plan, police and fire patches, a coffee mug, stuffed animals, and documents from different organizations. A wrinkled copy of TV Guide, which stopped publishing in 2008, was found next to a People Magazine featuring the movie star couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

An April 13, 2000, edition of the Brentwood Journal reported on “more than $3.35 million worth of intersection improvements” being planned for “Franklin Road at Concord Road and Moores and Murray lanes.”

Several local schools also contributed to the time capsule, including an essay by Woodland Middle School student Dylan Williams, describing a day-in-the-life at the school.

“I hang out in the halls for a while and talk to my friends,” Williams wrote. “When the one-minute bell rings that sounds like a phone, I go to my class. A minute later, the late bell rings and we watch Channel 1. Channel 1 is just like the news.”

Preston Bain, vice chair of the Brentwood Planning Commission, was at the library 25 years ago when the time capsule was originally buried. He spoke briefly during Sunday’s ceremony to talk about all that has changed above ground over the years.

“We were still using floppy disks,” he said. “The advent of the smart phone was still several years away, and the population of the City of Brentwood was 26,000 in the year 2000, and it’s just over 46,000 today. We’ve seen significant growth in the city.”

While the time capsule remained underground, several floods – including the historic 2010 flood – covered the area. Most of the items inside were damp, adding to the musty smell. After visitors to the ceremony viewed what was recovered, Rotary members collected the contents to dry them out. They hope to display these Brentwood 2000 artifacts in the coming weeks.