Everyone has a story they want to pass on, but in today’s society, the elderly rarely have a voice. Students at Plymouth State University are looking to remedy that. Jess Dube, a sophomore at Plymouth State University and an employee at the Writing and Reading Center, has been working with ten seniors at the Plymouth Senior Center to aid them in publishing memoirs in a book to be called “Stories to Tell My Grandkids.”
Dube functions as the facilitator during a one-hour session with the seniors each week. Each senior brings in stories they’ve been writing to workshop, read aloud and proof-read. They work together, with Dube and with two other Plymouth students, Amanda Cook and Amanda Parshley.
The program began a few years ago and was facilitated, not by Dube, but another Plymouth State student. However, the same year it started it fell through and the book was never published, and the student became discouraged from running the program in following years. Dube decided to jumpstart the program again when she heard about it in a Writing and Reading Center Meeting.
Dube, fastidiously planned everything on her own. She comes up with activities to do each week, runs the meetings and contacts publishers along with many other tasks. In fact, her biggest challenge has been coming up with funding for the program. She is hopeful that her meeting with Dick Hage next week will have positive results, and she and the seniors will have the money they need to publish the book.
“Once it’s published, each writer will have a few copies and we want to donate one to Lamson and the Town Hall,” Dube said, “the seniors write about historical events, it’ll be a very interesting read. They are very excited.”
For now the group is working on small individual stories but a lot of them hope to use these as a jumping point for writing their own complete memoirs. The group has even started planning their own writing group over the summer.
Dube hopes this experience will build community/university relations. They meet on Thursdays at the Senior Center from 11 A.M to 12 A.M. She urges anyone willing to get involved to get in touch with her at jddube@plymouth.edu. She wants to have the book published by the end of the semester.