"The saddest thing that happened is that I grew up.”
One line from among 200 poems sifting through memories of life two generations ago shades to the bittersweet. On the whole these poems, penned by poet Terry Wooten and Kingsley students, reflect a mosaic of ordinary and extraordinary events, feelings, lives and loves of elders from the small town.
The result is the play "In Their Own Words: Remembering Kingsley's Past,” which high school drama students will present for two showings this weekend at the school. Ten students will portray the elders, who in the play reminisce at a reunion about growing up during the Great Depression and World War II, attending school, serving in the war, getting married and local lore.
Immersing themselves in living history — devastating fires, harvesting potatoes, Summit City, one-room schoolhouses, tipping outhouses, going AWOL — the students have taken a personal tour of the past over the past months.
"It shows a lot about how things have changed,” said Amber Clairmont, a junior at the school.
Students auditioned for the roles and portray a range of elders, who in some cases turned out to be relatives of people they know. Reflecting on the words and deeds of their elders, they noticed many differences in their lives compared to people growing up in the 1930s and 1940s.
"Parents were more important, their priorities were more important than now,” said Kelby Harrigan, a junior at the school.
Students were able to meet with the elders before Spring break, putting a face to the stories and filling out the characters they will portray.
"The poems that were really funny is because that's the way the person talked in general,” noted Harrigan.
Kingsley is one of four sites for the 21st Century Learning Center grant, which funded two years of workshops with Wooten. Last year, Wooten and junior high school students met with and interviewed elders, transforming reminisces and stories into poems encapsulating their lives.
"The transgenerational stuff, a lot of these kids just don't have contact with their grandparents or great-grandparents,” said Scruffie Crockett, grant coordinator for Kingsley. "Terry got way hooked into this project, he couldn't stop writing poems and he took the rest of the material that was on the tape and turned those into poems, too.”
The ultimate goal is to compile the poems into a book, Crockett added, noting that last year the junior high students also presented a play.
Crockett recruited the elders for the project, tapping those who grew up in Kingsley and later settled there as adults. The results, she noted, exceeded everyone's expectations while also meeting many academic benchmarks for students.
"It kind of matched up with our wildest dreams,” said Crockett. "This is just magical, what happens when you bring these older people and younger people together — and it's such a wonderful way for these younger people to learn about the history of their community.”
Co-director Kim Nolf wove the poems into a manuscript that she and Missy Newell, a language arts teacher at the high school, used to create the upcoming production.
"Some of the poems are funny, some are sad and touching,” said Newell, who is also co-director of this weekend's production. "I think it's good to see local history first hand because it's actually alive and breathing, not something in a text book. And the things they did for fun, you can't find that in a book.”
"In Their Own Words: Remembering Kingsley's Past” will be presented on Saturday, April 28, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, April 29, at 2 p.m. at Kingsley High School's commons area. Admission is $3 for adults and $2 for students