This is the third in a series of articles about the discoveries found in the opening of the pyramid portion of the World’s Largest Time Capsule in Seward on July 4. The main time capsule is scheduled to be opened on July 4, 2025.
Viola B. Bjerrum was 72 years and eight months when she wrote a letter to her great-grandson, Colby, who was 2 years and five months old on July 2, 1985.
She anticipated that she would be gone before 2025 when he would retrieve the letter from the World’s Largest Time Capsule created by Seward’s Harold “Budd” Davisson.
No one could have anticipated that Colby would not be here to open it. Colby died unexpectedly in July 2010 at the age of 27, the result of a rare and undetected heart disease.
Grandma Vi’s letter though, was taken out of the time capsule’s pyramid on July 4 and has brought tears of joy and a flood of memories to Colby’s mother, Lori Bjerrum, and their family.
Neither she, her mother, nor other family and friends were aware that Grandma Vi had placed a letter to Colby in the pyramid when it was added to the time capsule in 1985.
When Davisson’s daughter, Trish Johnson, started distributing letters from the pyramid after July 4, she posted a photo of the letter’s envelope on Facebook. It was addressed to Colby Bjerrum and noted that he was the son of Lori and the grandson of Randy Bjerrum and Nancy Bjerrum.
The envelope did not reveal the letter writer’s identity.
“I just happened upon it on Facebook,” Lori said. “I saw the picture of the envelope.”
She and her mother arrived at the Davisson Furniture Center 10 minutes before it opened the next day to get the letter and opened it on the spot.
Lori started reading aloud and soon handed it to her mother to continue. When she could no longer speak through the tears, Johnson finished reading the letter to them.
Grandma Vi, who lived on the farm next to the Bjerrum farm near Utica where Lori grew up, said she was looking at a photo of Colby as she wrote about his impact on her and her late husband, Millard, who had died in August 1984.
“I want to tell you that we all love you so very much,” she wrote.
She wrote about the love his mother, grandfather, grandmother, and uncle, David Bjerrum, had shown to him so far in his early life.
“I think he would have been just speechless, just like we were,” Lori said from her home in Utica.
“He was so young so he probably wouldn’t have remembered my Grandpa Willard, but he definitely would have remembered my Grandma Viola,” she said.
“The last time you were over to see him, I moved your play pen next to his wheelchair,” Viola wrote. “He would put his hand on the edge of the play pen. You would put yours beside his, then he would pull his off and you would do the same, then you would both laugh. This kept up for some time, it was good to hear grandpa Millard laugh, he loved you so much and I knew you were bringing him joy.”
Viola died in 2006 at the age of 93 and had a close relationship with Colby as he grew into adulthood. A favorite photo shows Colby as a teenager dancing with his great-grandmother, who was an avid square dancer.
Colby graduated from Centennial High School and had his own deejay business, Colby’s Mobile Music. He also had worked at the Bullet Hole in Utica and Pac ‘N’ Save in Seward.
“He was such a caring child. He never cried. He was just always a happy kid,” Lori said.
She and her brother were also close to their grandmother. She recalls spending time at her house and the former school teacher having the kids work out problems and read books. Grandma Vi noted in the letter that David was helping his dad work on a duplex in Seward for her retirement years.
In the letter, her grandmother put into words her feelings about her family.
“She never really spoke like this to me, and I was with her a lot when I was growing up,” Lori said.
“Your mother Lori has taken such good care of you and loves you dearly. She is a wonderful mother to you. Your grandma Nancy, grandpa Randy, and Uncle David have all helped care for you and they all loved doing it,” she wrote.
Lori has shared the letter with family and friends on Facebook.
“Family stuff means a lot to me,” she said, noting that she was adopted into the Bjerrum family.
She and her mother made a trip to the old House of Davisson building where some of the pyramid’s contents are stored and looked at the letters still waiting to be claimed. They found one addressed to a friend and, with Johnson’s permission, delivered it to her family.
They know the power of opening that envelope.
