FARGO (AP) - A homecoming pin, a newspaper clipping and a message from 1947 are among the contents of a time capsule found behind the cornerstone of Fossum Hall, a former Oak Grove Lutheran School auditorium and dormitory scheduled for demolition.

Students, faculty members and alumni gathered this week to pay their last respects to the building, which is to be razed Monday, and to see the contents of the time capsule.

John Larson had found it Saturday - a copper container the size and shape of a small shoe box.

At the school gymnasium on Wednesday, Larson pried the box open with a screwdriver and tin snips and carefully removed a roll of old papers wrapped in a maroon-and-white Oak Grove banner, with a 1947 homecoming pin attached to it.

As the papers unraveled, Morgan Forness, dean of students at Oak Grove, held up each item for the students: a copy of "Luther's Small Catechism Explained," written in Norwegian; a newspaper account of the marriage of England's Princess Elizabeth to Lt. Philip Mountbatten; an old Oak Grove handbook.

"In those days, girls were all required to wear dresses," Forness said, drawing groans from the female students.

On the front page of Lutheran Life Light, the monthly publication from Oak Grove Seminary, Forness saw a message.

"To you who may someday open this box," it began and went on to say the box had been sealed Nov. 2, 1947.

"This building is being erected in days when conditions in the world are disturbed," the message read. "Many fear new wars and terrible destruction. But we who erect this building do so because we believe that through Christian education for coming generations, we can do the most to build and maintain righteousness and liberty among all nations."

Students wrote their own farewells on the walls of Fossum Hall.

Outside the building, Beulah Forness, Morgan's mother, inspected the empty space that held the cornerstone and time capsule for more than half a century. She graduated in 1949, the year the building opened, but she didn't write on the walls Wednesday.

"I just said my teary goodbye," she said.

The building will be demolished to make way for the Scheels Center for the Performing Arts. Construction on the 24,000-square-foot center will start this month, with completion slated for fall 2007.