Ancestry Magazine

Orson had had enough. Bedridden and depressed, he had lived the last few months of his already-long life tied to an oxygen tank. His pain was almost intolerable. He seemed to have given up. Then someone unexpected came along.

“You have no idea how much it meant to him to have those kids come and talk with him,” Cathie says of the experience. “It gave him more energy and strength, something to look forward to. It was such a positive experience.” One week after the interviews were complete, Orson died. “But he had a chance to tell his stories,” says Cathie. And that is what’s important.

Everybody’s got a story to tell. The idea for Cathie English’s three-year oral history project came after a co-worker’s centenarian grandmother passed away unexpectedly, taking her stories with her. Motivated by her coworker’s loss, Cathie started the Aurora High School Oral History Project.

As part of the project, students met with, befriended, and interviewed elderly members of their community. They then recorded, transcribed, and presented these interviews with the person’s life story. “The first year we met with nursing home residents,” says Cathie, and “it was by far the most emotional experience. To get to know these people, and then to see obituary notices later. I didn’t know how sad it would be.”

But she finds consolation in the knowledge that, although their lives have ended, their stories will live on.

In recent years, more and more schools have tackled their own similar project. They’ve collected stories at senior centers, in farming communities, or right in their own family tree, recording them all for posterity. It’s happening all around the country, and it starts as early as the third grade.

Connecting Generations

“I was nervous,” fifth-grader Stephen Kowalski says about going to the senior center last year. He was part of Kathleen Veestra’s fourth-grade class at Central Elementary School in Muskegon, Michigan. “It was a little strange because I had never been in that building and it was big and I didn’t know anyone.”

His teacher, Kathleen, had anticipated these kinds of feelings. Now in her 12th year of collecting oral histories with fourth graders, she loves to see her students grow during the process. “I always try to get my students to reach outside of themselves,” she says. “And this project reaches students who are otherwise not excited about anything school has to offer.”

Before students meet and interview their “senior friends,” as Kathleen calls them, they go through sensitivity training. Staff members from different care facilities use a variety of activities to show the children what sort of adversities the seniors might be dealing with. “Students wear petroleum-jelly-smeared sunglasses [to simulate diminished eyesight] and cotton balls in their ears [to imitate a loss of hearing]. They have to open small boxes with their fingers taped together {arthritis} and try walking with walkers and getting down the hall in wheelchairs,” says Kathleen. “It really raises their sense of awareness.”

Most importantly, says Cathie English, participants tend to “dispel the myths about each other. Some older generations think teens are lazy and worthless, and some teens think the elderly just sit around in nursing homes all day. We bridged the generation gap quite a bit. I think both groups found out they weren’t quite what they thought they were.”

The interviews were full of surprises too. “One of the residents had worked at a bank that was robbed by the Dillinger Gang,” recalls Cathie. “Another, Mary Quinn—she was the oldest resident—talked about this necklace, this little locket she had gotten from her boyfriend years before her husband came along. There was a carriage ride and all. One hundred and two years old and that’s what she wanted to tell. It was great.”

“I liked getting to know what it was like when she was a kid,” recalls fifth-grader Stephen. “I think that’s what really made it fun.” Especially when they realized life wasn’t so different—that these people were kids once, too. Kids who went on to live long lives and make a lot of great stories in the process.

So what has come out of these oral history projects?

Not only was each resident presented with a transcribed copy of hours worth of interviews—their life history—but many rich, long-lasting relationships have been formed.

“He gained more respect for the elderly,” says Wendy Kowalski of her son Stephen’s experience. “He wanted to see her [his senior friend] and he keeps in touch with her every month.” From another parent: “It teaches kids … how much our elderly have to offer in showing us where we’ve come from and in some ways maybe even where we’ve lost ground.”

“Several months ago, a granddaughter of one of the residents called to see if we had the recording,” says Cathie. She had been searching for information on her grandfather and when checking with the nursing home, they mentioned he had been involved in an oral history project. “So they told her to get in touch with me. It’s been 10 years now since he passed—how amazing for her to hear his voice again. I understand that need. I would love to learn something more of my grandfather. And not everyone gets that chance.”

Cathie’s History

After years of collecting the oral histories of other families with her students, Cathie English decided to turn to her own family, starting with her father. “He’s a great storyteller. My love of stories comes from my dad,” says English, “so I interviewed him. I wrote all these questions—probably 100 of them—and he answered every single one of them. Took 10 hours. Ten hours of wonderful stories.”

Cathie’s dad died two years later, and today, the tapes still sit, untranscribed. “My dad had a beautiful voice, and there’s a part of me that feels like I won’t be able to sit down and listen to them just yet. It will be hard to go back.” But the tapes are there whenever she’s ready.
These oral history projects have not only preserved lives, they have changed them. “I have students come by 10 years down the road to tell me it was their most memorable educational experience,” says Kathleen Veestra. “They remember their senior friends years after they’ve passed.”

And taking the time to reflect back on a long life is a fulfilling experience for the elderly participants as well. As Cathie says of Orson, “It was his chance to say ‘I mattered!’ You need to be able to tell someone your story, so you can know that. So you can say, ‘I had a good life, and I mattered.’” After all, said one of Kathleen’s students, just nine years of age, “Everybody has a good story to tell … when you listen.”

Lisa Salazar is the former associate editor of Ancestry Magazine.