Sitting at the Feet of Our Elders: Flanner House Speaks

Book excerpt: Sitting at the Feet of Our Elders: Flanner House Speaks is a project of the Writers' Center of Indiana and Flanner House Indianapolis and has been generously funded by Central Indiana Community Foundation's James Proctor Fund for Aged Men and Women, a fund of The Indianapolis Foundation, in Marion County. Our purpose in this project was simple...to remember. We gathered as many memories as we could from the Elders. We had many seniors who could not write, so we listened and wrote for them. We asked them at first to just remember anything - people, places, events, or times. After listing those snapshot memories, we then asked the seniors to take one memory talk about the entire scene and to tell it like they remember it happening and feeling. The book begins with examples of lines from their first exercise of completing the phrase, I Remember... As you read on, you will see those lines then developed into complete memoirs.