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Karen Chace recalls the moment when her son, at 12, saw a picture of a beautiful 18-year-old woman. He asked who it was; Chace replied that it was his grandmother, who was then in her 60s.
“I started thinking that children don’t understand that their parents or grandparents had a life before them,” Chace said.
A longtime teacher originally from New Bedford, she wanted to connect her students to seniors in their community. She connected with Andrea Lovett, another East Freetowner, who grew up engrossed by her grandmother’s stories, listening to them instead of playing outside with her cousins.
“Andrea and I started to collaborate,” Chace recalls, “and I said to her one day, ‘Hey, I had this idea: what do you think?’”
From their collaboration came the program Once Upon a Generation in 2016. The 12-week program connects students, from 4th through 12th grade, to local senior citizens. The students interview a senior and, in workshops with Lovett and Chace, identify and perform a story from the senior’s life.
The Massachusetts Legislature recently recognized Once Upon a Generation in honor of its 10th anniversary. The program also received the inaugural Angela Lloyd Sunbrella Award from the National Storytelling Network for excellence in working with students on live storytelling.
Chace knew Angela Lloyd, the namesake of the award, who passed away unexpectedly last year.
“She did storytelling with children; she did intergenerational storytelling,” Chace said.
Chace describes her journey to becoming a professional storyteller as an act of “serendipity.” She worked in accounting for Freetown Elementary, and attended a talented-and-gifted conference for educators in New Hampshire. Their entertainment, during one night of the conference, was a storyteller.
“[The performer] wove wonderful folk tales with personal stories from her childhood,” she said.
Chace attended a storytelling conference in Iowa soon after, then started her after-school storytelling program at the elementary school in 2002. She and Lovett connected through the nonprofit Northeastern Storytelling a decade ago.
“We do everything together,” Lovett said. “We’re colleagues, but we’re also good friends.”
Students join Once Upon a Generation by invitation; Chace often chooses students from her after-school storytelling program on folk and fairy tales.
The performances of seniors’ stories are open to the community, with audience members coming from the New Bedford and Dartmouth areas among other places. Lovett said it’s often “standing room only, and still people can’t get in.”
Lovett described Chace’s students as kind and patient, even though many of them had little experience talking to older people, because they didn’t grow up with their grandparents nearby.
Chace said her students say they’re surprised that the seniors have so many stories to share and have done amazing things.
“Every year, they just cannot believe that they’re hearing what these seniors have either coped with, endured, gone through,” Chace said.
She said stories that intersect with moments in history make an impact on the students, but smaller moments do too.
“I think it’s giving them a much deeper knowledge of life in general, that life isn’t just fabulous moments,” Chace said. “It’s the little moments with family and friends that help you grow.”
Danielle Bartholet is a journalism intern from Emerson College. Email her at dbartholet@newbedfordlight.org.
