The young and the not-so-young celebrated six years of a special relationship when they played bingo Tuesday afternoon at the Emporia Presbyterian Manor.
The young — third- and fourth-grade students at St. Joseph’s School in Olpe — and Manor residents get together each month from August through May to do arts, crafts, play games, go out to eat and, sometimes, just visit. Half the time, the residents ride to Olpe to participate, and the other half, the 22 students ride to Emporia with parent volunteers and their teacher, Machelle Nuessen.
The arrangement here, part of “The Sky’s the Limit Intergenerational Program,” grew from a suggestion from former Manor employee, Kim Redeker, who also happened to be a parent of one of Nuessen’s students, Nuessen said.
“When we first started, there were a couple of other schools participating,” Nuessen said. “Now we’re the only one.”
The smaller numbers may have created a better program and nurtured better relationships among the students and the residents.
The students quickly took seats near their favorite adults when they arrived on Tuesday, chatting with them as they waited for bingo caller Kathy Salts to begin. They know each other well by now, after spending one or two school years doing activities together.
A recent gathering at St. Joseph’s included the school’s treating both groups to lunch at the Chicken House.
“The school paid for it because they (Presbyterian Manor) feed us,” Nuessen said.
She turned the activity into a mathematics lesson, as the children planned how many meals they would need, what the cost would be, and how much gratuity would be owed.
“They have to figure out how much they owe because we pre-order,” she said. “It takes some planning.”
The leaders on each side plan the monthly activities that will be held at each location, and Nuessen laughed as she talked about Marketing Director Ken Hanson’s hesitancy when he asked if it would be all right for the children to play bingo.
“I said, ‘Ken, we’re all Catholic. We play bingo (in fundraisers) five times a year. ... Most of them learn their numbers this way,’” Nuessen said.
Each year, at the initial meeting in August, Nuessen prepares a list of questions for the students to ask residents, Hanson said. Her questions are intended to open conversations.
From that initial session, the relationships blossom. Members of each group find they have an affinity for certain members of the other group.
On Tuesday, two fifth-graders who have aged out of the program had sent along a letter to be given to their friend Gertrude Protzman, who had affectionately called them her boys, Hanson said. The trio had made friends when the youngsters were in third and fourth grade.
The letter, which included a large red heart, said in part, “We are sorry we can’t see you any more. … We are your boys, Jeff and Bo. God bless you.”
That type of close relationship is not unusual among the kids and the adults, and Hanson said they try to make sure it doesn’t end abruptly. Some of the friends keep in touch by letters.
“And then, we try to get together twice a year with the fifth and sixth grade class to make sure everybody stays caught up,” he said.
Ann Scheller, who had accompanied her daughter Maranda Scheller and the other children on Tuesday, said that her own mother had looked forward to the visits when she lived at the Manor.
“She always brought her camera,” Scheller said of her mother. “She’d take a picture of each kid. She would have them developed and hand them out” to the students.
When her mother died in March, Scheller discovered her mother had some unfinished business.
“We had found a packet of pictures she’d had developed and they were in her purse,” Scheller said. “She had them ready for the next time she’d go down.”