The next best thing to sitting down for coffee with a fascinating person is to sit down with their oral history and let their stories and memories unfurl. A new oral history collection on the website of Historic Chevy Chase DC called “Eighty, Meet 18” does just that. It debuts the work of 10 area high school students who recorded the life stories of residents of Chevy Chase DC’s senior residential communities. The stories, presented in transcript form, are full of intriguing experiences, pivotal life transitions, and decades of collected wisdom.
Cate Atkinson, vice president of HCCDC and program director of “Eighty, Meet 18: Seniors Talk, Youth Listen, and a Valuable Collection is Born,” said that the project grew out of a desire to engage youth in the important work of neighborhood-based historical research.
Students from six area high schools – Jackson-Reed, St. John’s, School Without Walls, Sidwell Friends, Washington International School, and Walt Whitman in Bethesda – were selected by essay application for the project that geared up in November. They were paired with residents of neighborhood senior facilities and became immersed in the enthralling experience of listening to someone six or seven decades older tell them about their long lives.
Also featured in the collection are short biographies of the students, all of whom were between ages 15 and 17. They were taught the oral history method that focuses on active listening and gently guiding a conversation. Mentorship, fact-checking, and genealogical research ensured the oral histories are valuable tools for future historians as well as be priceless keepsakes for narrators’ families.
Students also sharpened their writing skills by creating lively, easily digestible abstracts of each oral history. These are designed to share with health-care workers in the event that the subjects lose agency due to illness or age, enabling them to be seen for their humanity rather than just as patients needing assistance.
Atkinson said an equally important goal of the project was to assist in integrating residents of Chevy Chase DC’s five senior residential communities into their rightful place as neighbors, instead of often-overlooked residents siloed away. The five homes are Knollwood Life Plan Community, Ingleside at Rock Creek, The Chevy Chase House, The Regency House, and Sunrise on Connecticut Avenue.
The Narrators
Among the narrators are a retired CIA station chief in Moscow; an actress who gave up on Broadway to become a typist at the newly created National Endowment of the Arts and eventually rose to acting NEA Chair; a woman married to a NIH vaccine researcher who raised six kids then became an expert but accidental DC tour guide for 20 years; and a British woman who survived the Blitz in childhood, came to America during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and took a Greyhound across America – twice! – before remaking herself as a landscape designer who created gardens at the White House and National Observatory.
Students also had the valuable experience of presenting their work at the DC History Conference this past week, where they shared their work with academics, historians, and community activists, captivating these professionals by the caliber of work produced.
The student participants are Amaia Catan, Lucy Carroll, Gardiner Dietrich, Maddy Fine, Caroline Reilly, Phoebe Sood, Charlie Martin and Natalia Weinstein. In addition, the student group included two guest contributors from Washington International School – Celeste Martin and Sofia Vakis – who created a podcast called “Senior Stories” on Spotify that parallels the work by the “Eighty, Meet 18” group and provides an additional medium.Atkinson said the entire collection, which is on the HCCDC website under the “Oral Histories” tab, will continue next year with a new crop of students. Interested student applicants can email her at cate.atkinson@gmail.com.