"I thought probably I would just fade away."

December 1, 2017 10:38 PM

At 102 years old, Florence Wheeler never expected to share her life story with a 16-year-old stranger, but it turned out to be an experience they will both cherish. As part of a program run by Allity Aged Care at her nursing home in Walkerville in Adelaide's inner south-east, Mrs Wheeler sat down with year 10 student Nathan McCarthy once a week for 10 weeks to co-write her memoirs. (video)
posted by Johnny Wallflower (6 comments total)

That was lovely, thank you. Those young men just seemed so guileless and sweet--I'm cynical sometimes, but I have a young man in one of my English classes this semester who is like that, just open and kind and genuinely curious about other people. I could see him participating enthusiastically in a project like this. And I could totally believe the elderly folks involved would start to look forward to the weekly visits too. I'm glad they get to tell their stories.

The thing that most strikes me about this is that these young men have probably developed quite a bit of empathy for older people that they may not otherwise have had, if they didn't spend much time around grandparents or older people previously. This seems like a great project. Well done everyone involved!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:03 PM on December 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

This is a win every way I can think of--a chance to reflect and record their lives for the older people, a chance to learn about the past through direct experience for the kids, and a chance for empathy and connections for all of them, plus if the stories are all kept somewhere they could become a really amazing archive.
The other 93-year-old lady says "Over the years, I've got to learn to live with myself, in myself, and it's just been me," which is in itself a remarkable expression with a lot to unpack. I hope some of that process gets spun out in her story too.
posted by huimangm at 2:41 AM on December 2, 2017 [3 favorites]

I love this! And I'm going to share it with faculty members at my university who are committed to incorporating experiential learning into their courses.
posted by mareli at 6:36 AM on December 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

This year, my son's teacher assigned them a project to record an NPR Storycorps thing over Thanksgiving. I had just taken him to see the 50th anniversary of Hair, and he really wanted to interview his uncle about his service in Vietnam. I was pretty hesitant, because Vietnam is still a tricky subject. But, he did a ton of research, wrote and rewrote his questions, and then sat down and talked, and y'all, that boy got stories that I've never heard. I learned things about a man I've known forever, because a kid asked him questions.

I'm going to share this fpp story with our school superintendent, and see if he thinks maybe we could find a way to do something similar.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:52 AM on December 2, 2017 [4 favorites]

When I was in 6th grade and very interested in World War II, my dad gave me a few books that compiled Ernie Pyle columns. I devoured them - what an amazing writer, and what amazing stories. And then, in a column about being in North Africa, he writes about being driven around by a guy named John Coughlin, from my hometown. I tried to find him by looking at old yearbooks in the city library, but to no avail - so I sent an e-mail to a local newspaper columnist to see if he had any idea how I could find out what happened to this man. It turned out that his networks couldn't find him either, but he had his own favorite Ernie Pyle column with men from Manchester, NH who were in the second wave at D-Day. And so what he did was he just looked in the phone book and called the first Armand Provencher and Jim Bresnahan, and they happened to be the right men. They were interested in meeting me because I was an 11-year-old girl who was curious about Ernie Pyle and D-Day and stuff, and so they came to my house and we talked and they told me amazing stories for a few hours, and they ended up writing a little article about it in the paper.

Anyways, a bunch of people who knew John Coughlin saw that article and got in touch with the columnist, and when he and his wife visited family in NH the following year (they were living in Gainesville), I got to sit down and chat with them. I can't describe how amazingly cool it was to finally meet him, and to ask about driving Ernie Pyle around, and to ask about the rest of his war experience, and his life. I'm tearing up writing this part, but the best part about it is that I think it was really meaningful for the gentlemen I got to speak with, too. I don't know that they really had a lot of people ask them about their experiences, certainly not young kids, and I think it meant a lot to know that their stories were still interesting and important and impressive, even 55 years after the fact. They've all since passed away - John Coughlin passed away in 2009 at age 90 - but the thing that touched me the most is that our conversation was important enough to him and his family that they put it in his obituary.

All that is to say, there's an awful lot to be gained by young people sitting down and having conversations with old people. Mutual respect and understanding and feelings of pride and importance on both sides. This is wonderful.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:36 PM on December 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

Allison Klein, WaPo: A rapper and an 81-year-old woman just met in person after bonding over Words With Friends for more than a year

The close friendship between the 20-something rapper in New York and the 80-something retiree in Florida started with the word p-h-a-t, which is hip-hop slang for excellent.

Rosalind Guttman, 81, was playing Words With Friends, the online Scrabble-like game, and used the word. She had been randomly paired up with Spencer Sleyon, 22, an aspiring rapper and hip-hop producer.

“I was like, yo, how do you know that word?” Sleyon asked her.

And so they started messaging as they played. When that game was over, they played another and another.

Over time, they became gaming partners across the miles, playing more than 300 games starting in the summer of 2016 and found that they were a superb match. They were competitive, but as the games kept coming, a familiarity developed, and soon, an unlikely friendship.

And last week, they met in person in Palm Beach, hugging and smiling like long-lost relatives. Sleyon posted photos on social media, and their friendship instantly became an Internet sensation.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:52 PM on December 5, 2017 [1 favorite]