CAPTURING LIFE STORIES
Connecting, collecting, composing: Writing students try to capture the lives of Alzheimer’s patients in profiles to be given to kin.
Students write down the memories of Alzheimer’s patients to give to their loved ones.
“That’sme,” said Paul Schoolcraft. “Iwas 19 years old.”
He knows that the picturewas taken at a convent in Japan, afterWorldWar II had ended, when hewas still in theArmy. Although he has carried it for years and it clearly remains a touchstone of his life, its significance nowescapes a deteriorating memory.
Kyle Rusk, a 23-year-old student at Community College ofAurora, sawthe photo’s effect and gently probed further, hoping to flesh out this chapter of Schoolcraft’s life.
“He didn’t remember exactly where he was, or why he was there,” Rusk said. “I think he was part
aurora » The old man’s eyes brightened beneath the bill of his baseball cap as he pulled out a weathered wallet and explored the folds and creases until, beneath a leather flap, he found what he was looking for— the black-and-white photograph of a boyish young man grinning for the camera and surrounded by nuns in black habits. of the occupation force in Japan after the war. He really liked it there, from what he told me.”
Rusk and 19 other students in instructor Rachel Blue Ankney’s composition class have been handed a challenging assignment that asks them to reach beyond the basic essay. In two separate sessions one week apart, they interviewed residents of a Denver facility that cares for people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia— and then attempted to capture that person in a three- or four-page profile.
Ankney will grade their efforts like other pieces of writing, but the students seem even more invest-
“Iwant to portray her feelings to her family, and how that’s echoed through the years. Those are her most vibrant memories, so I definitely want her family to know they’re still with her, no matter what.” Kevin Shea