Franklin Elementary School will host its next closing celebration from 9 to noon Saturday.

The Lehighton Area School District is closing its four elementary schools at the end of the school year. All elementary students will be attending the new Lehighton Elementary Center in the fall.

To celebrate the closing of the schools, Franklin staff is holding four closing celebrations to give past students of the school an opportunity to take a walk down memory lane.

This celebration is for students and staff who attended Franklin Elementary in the ’70s and ’80s. The highlight of the morning will be the memorial service at 10:30 a.m.

The former students who started this service in 1988 will come full circle as they honor the soldiers as they did at that first service by reading the Franklin Township soldiers’ names who served in the military during the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam.

Plan to arrive early for the ceremony.

If the school lot is full, extra parking can be found at Majestic Fire Apparel and People’s Church on Wagner Street and at Christman field on Walnut Street.

The last celebration was held May 5. Students who attended during the years 1999 to 2005 were invited to tour the school and visit with the teachers who taught at the school during that time period.

Tanner and Kaylee Seltzer, and Luke and Christiana Graver were excited to see the Pennsylvania Dutch Display.

They reminisced with Denise Gerber, the Pennsylvania Dutch Day Coordinator and fourth-grade teacher, about the activities held at Pennsylvania Dutch Day.

Gerber was giving away many of the items left from those activities and this group left with apple peelers and rolling pins.

A timeline was put together by the four committees working on the celebrations.

Visitors could record their favorite memories of attending Franklin Elementary on a memory wall. Franklin School shelf sitters or Franklin T-shirts were available to purchase in the lobby, where a replica of the quilt that was presented to President Bush after 9/11 is on display.

In all, over 24 former teachers and staff members were present at the celebration. The highlight of the morning was the opening of the time capsule that was supposed to be opened in 2025. Although there was some trouble initially getting the capsule open, everyone was amazed to see all of the documents that had been squirreled away in the box. Artifacts included newspapers, ads, textbooks, test results, and mementos from programs that had been held that year.

The most exciting item in the time capsule was the quilt which was designed by retired teacher Carole Steigerwalt and constructed by the fourth-grade class of 1999-2000.