Oral history project planned in Hanover

By Mark Burridge

Hanover — In a project that will begin later this year, senior citizens will be recorded on local community television having discussions and sharing their stories with senior high school students.

“We’ll have the seniors share their experiences,” said Robyn Mitton, the director of the Hanover COA. “There is such history here in Hanover.”

The project will have volunteers who are high school seniors and seniors from the senior center sit down, senior-to-senior, and just talk about life.

“It’s a great inter-generational project,” said Mitton. “Once it gets rolling, we’ll have more and more volunteers.”

The creators of the project hope to make it a series and not just a couple videos; however, that idea depends completely on volunteers.

“We’re looking to do something more structured,” said Michael Purdy, Hanover director of technology. “We want to have a dialogue.”

The project kicks off on Tuesday, June 26 at 11 a.m., which is a meeting to announce project goals; however, the actual recording won’t begin for several months, when high school seniors will be able to sign up for the program as a senior project.

“They started the humanities capstone project at the high school,” Purdy said. “I’ll let them work out the kinks for that.”

Both kinds of seniors will have notes to work off of during the presentation so that there are always questions to be asked.

“Over a period of time, we want to build up a life story [for the seniors],” said Les Molyneaux, co-president of the historical society. “The idea is that senior citizens might want to record their life story to give to their children or grandchildren.”

Although the conception behind the idea is in full view and the seniors are on board, the project will need to be patient as the incoming high school seniors will need to not only agree to do it but have it approved as their senior project.

“It takes them a while to discuss senior projects,” said Molyneaux.

Then, if the project does indeed get the volunteers it needs and the project can get the attention of an organization like historychannel.com, Purdy hoped there could be a future.

“Maybe we’ll be able to turn it into a funded project,” he said.

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