Senior Citizens share their memories and make a gift to the future

 Ruby Walton of Janesville, WI, teaches a class at the Senior Citizen Center called Reminiscence Writing. The stories shared by the members of her class included games they played when young, hardships of the 1930’s Great Depression and World War II, details related by their parents, home remedies administered by loving mothers, and much more. The stories were too good not to share with others, so in 2004, she edited and published Hopscotch, Hobos & Foxholes: A Kaleidoscope of Memories. Each year since then, she and the members of her classes have used the profits from the book to buy dictionaries for all of the third graders in the Janesville Public Schools. This year they purchased almost 800 dictionaries. Mrs. Walton states, “It’s a joy to see the look on the children’s faces when they receive this dictionary. Their thank-you letters mention how they use them, what words they look up, word games they play with the dictionary, and some even say, ‘This is the first book I ever owned.’”