RICHMOND – Leading Ray Countians have united to bury today’s ephemera for generations tomorrow. They gathered Oct. 12 at the new park at West North Main and North College streets to bury a time capsule pieced together by the Ray County Bicentennial Committee. Longtime history teacher Dr. Hal Middleton led the committee comprised of Ray County Museum Director Cathy Gottsch, Richmond News sales representative Sharon Donat and Healing Touch Bodywork owner Misti McKenzie. Before and during the ceremony, Gottsch said planting the time capsule coincides with bicentennials shared by the county and the state, which trace their formal origins to 1821. Committee members began working on ideas to mark the anniversary, but the pandemic that interrupted the lives of everyone in the nation, and has ended the lives of 48 Ray Countians to date, intervened. “In our original incarnation, pre-COVID, there were a number of projects that we could do, and the time capsule was one of them,” Gottsch said. …