Hi Fellow Alumni:

After Hunter College School of Social Work graduation in '74, I launched the Rochdale Village Senior Center near JFK Airport and was given the opportunity to engage in several innovative intergenerational projects.

They included:

1. Operation Green Thumb: Having scouts and senior citizens team up to turn the garbage dump near Schlesinger Jr High into a fertile vegetable garden.
2. Rochdale Puppet Theatre: Engaging our senior needlecraft class to sew these hand puppets and our senior writers to produce several scripts, we toured the area nursery schools to offer puppet shows and narrow a generation gap.
3. Immigrant Oral History:  Many elderly Jewish families were of immigrant stock and we wanted to capture their stories.  Our successful grant recruited college students as writer-interviewers.  The ELLIS ISLAND DIGEST thus resulted. We got Rep. Joe Addabbo to write the magazine's introduction.

Finally, after a number of our active seniors became homebound, we developed the rather unique concept of monthly teleconferences on health-related subjects with a Red Cross health educator serving as moderator.  It was called THE SUNSHINE LINE.

This became a national prototype and was replicated elsewhere.  I'd love to share the logistics with any interested parties.  It is especially useful for those in isolation.

Please contact me at: 3289 Oak Crest NW, Salem, OR 97304 (tel: 503-365-7533).

Our generation could well become the major benefactors.

Warmly,

Barry-Lee Coyne, Class of 1959