Covenant News

Kids Ask Seniors: What Was It Like?

LIVINGSTON, NJ (January 22, 2004) - Trinity Covenant Church elementary school children learned about their neighbors by spending time interviewing area senior adults on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this past Monday.

Susan Gillespie, associate pastor for Youth and Family Ministry at Trinity Covenant, said children ages 5-11 were involved in a series of "oral history" interviews with six senior adults at Cedar Street Commons, a senior housing complex near the church. The event - "Learning From and Lending a Hand to Our Seniors" - was designed to connect community organizations with seniors living in town.

According to Gillespie, the interviewers learned about how hard children worked decades ago, as the senior adults told them they used to peddle all sorts of items door to door (among other things) to earn money. The seniors come from different demographic backgrounds as reflected in the varied memories they shared. The Trinity children learned that the seniors enjoyed a snowy day as much 70 years ago as the kids do today. And, through drawing timelines of the era during which the senior adults lived, the kids learned that a 95-year-old resident was almost as old as the New York Yankees professional baseball franchise, which began in 1903.

Gillespie said she has already discovered two positive things that developed out of the interviews: seniors discovered that they enjoyed sharing their memories with the children and vowed to continue the conversations at a later date, and the editor of the West Essex Tribune, the local newspaper, discovered what the children were planning to do and applauded the efforts in a January 15 editorial.

"Recognizing that elders like to tell their stories, and that children don't always have an opportunity to get to know older people, we thought it might bless our community if we could find a way to bring the two age groups together," Gillespie said of why the church decided to interview their neighbors. She added that questions pertained to "everything from chores and homework when the seniors were children to whether or not they got into trouble in school or what made them scared when they were little."

Gillespie and Cyndy Traverso, the mother of one of the children participating in the interviews, are compiling a report on the project. For more information about the church and Monday's interviews, contact Gillespie by telephone at 973-635-3459 or by email at sgillesp@optonline.net.

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