As part of the course for Journalism 325 at Chico State University, my classmates and I have each been paired with a senior citizen living at the active retirement center Sycamore Glenn.
Over the course of several interviews with our partners we will each make a transcript of our interviews and then turn those oral histories into full-length feature stories.
I was paired with 91- year-old, Perry Nethington. We met for the first time just about a month ago, and have since spent about 4 hours together.
We first met at the retirement center. I arrived promptly at 2 pm. We shook hands and made our way slowly to his room. Along the way we talked.
I asking him how he was and other general questions, but we we’re still no closer to his room, or so it seemed to me, we were walking so slowly.
I tried to fill in the emptiness of our conversation with some chitchat about the project.
“So I’m here to take the most interesting parts of your life and turn them into a story,” I said. “How do you feel about telling your life story to a stranger and letting them turn it into something other people might read?”
“Oh, I’m very exited,” he said. “I just don’t know what I can tell you that you’ll think is interesting,” he said.
“Great,” I thought to myself, “Just my luck I get paired off with the most boring guy here.”
By now were almost half way to his room, and we filled the space in-between with more idle conversation.
When we got to his room, I explained the project in greater detail and then began our first interview without much hope of learning anything of great interest or excitement.
“What are you most thankful for?” I asked.
“Oh, I thank the Lord for blessing me,” he said. “For both of my wives.”
Well now we’re getting somewhere I thought to myself. Maybe I lucked out after all and got paired with a perverse Mormon polygamist.
But alas, no, he simply remarried after his first wife died, and I had to keep searching for an interesting story angle.
But Mr. Nethington is interesting and he has had a full and productive life. He’s fathered two children of his own, and helped raise countless grandchildren. He had a long carrier working for the state on workers rights issues, and he was a Marine before the outbreak of World War Two. All and all, not a dull life.
