Elders’ Wisdom, Children’s Song Monday
Experience the wisdom of elders through the songs of children Monday, Feb. 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Custer Jr./Sr. High School Theater during the Elders’ Wisdom, Children’s Song (EWCS) program. Through the event, fourth-grade students at Custer Elementary School will come together to celebrate this year’s elders Joyce Hand and Jim Coates.
“This is a program that brings our school and community together to build strong relationships,” said Custer Elementary principal Barb Paulson.
The idea for this program first began in 1998 after Hank Fridell, a former Custer Elementary School principal, moved to Spearfish. As the principal of East Elementary in Spearfish, Fridell went to a workshop put on by the Annenberg Foundation, which was offering grants for community engagement in schools. While there, Fridell met Larry Long who was a singer, songwriter and community activist.
“What he would do is he would interview elders from the community with kids. And then with the kids, he would write a song about the elder, and then he would hold a community celebration,” said Fridell.
In the fall of 1999, Fridell invited Long to come to Spearfish, and four classrooms were involved in interviewing four elders and putting on a community celebration.
“After that was over—Marianne (Fridell’s wife) and I are both songwriters—I just thought, ‘We can do this.’ So I talked to Larry and got some advice from him, and he encouraged us to do it. So we’ve just been rolling with it ever since,” said Fridell.
When Fridell moved to Custer in 2005, he brought EWCS along and convinced the teachers that it was a good program. Meanwhile, the program continued in Spearfish in Fridell’s absence.
“I always consider the success of a program that it lives after its originator. So it has been very successful there,” said Fridell.
Now Fridell said the program has been running in Spearfish for 24 years and in Custer for 17.
“Between those two schools, it’s been about 160 elders that have been honored, impacting about 3,800 kids. So it’s kind of an amazing thing,” said Fridell.
Over the course of time, Fridell wrote around 28 songs, Marianne wrote 38 and another 23 songwriters have been involved. Although Fridell dropped out of songwriting this year, he is still involved with organizing the program, recording the songs and running the sound system.
The songwriting process starts with an interview. For this, the honored elder comes to class, and the children ask all kinds of questions.
“Part of what’s a little bit funny is they ask in-depth questions, but they also ask questions like, ‘What’s your favorite color?’ or ‘What’s your favorite song?’” said Marianne. “The kids are writing down things trying to remember everything, but at that age, there are kind of little tape recorders in their heads. So they remember things really well.”
Usually, Fridell said, the elders talk about what it was like growing up, experiences as children, education, decisions they made after school, life changes, their family and career, things they learned maturing through life, interests, passions, what is important to them, people who have influenced them and things they are proud of.
“The kids get to hear all of this background,” said Hank. “We try and capture what is that essence of that person.”
After the interview, the songwriter gets together with the children as soon as possible to start processing the information into a song.
“They (the children) come loaded with ideas. You just want to try and incorporate as much as you can in the songs,” said Fridell.
“What I always hope for is getting something that can be a chorus because that repeats and comes through in that first time we get together. Then, we talk about what are the main things that we want in the song because you can’t put everything in,” said Marianne.
Once the song is ready, they record it so the children can practice the song with the recording. For Custer, the elders were selected in the fall, the interviews were conducted before Thanksgiving and the songs were ready after Christmas vacation.
When it comes to selecting elders to honor, Paulson said, “We have a list of elders that have been recommended by staff and community members. Community members can email or call the school to make recommendations. This year we also plan to have a recommendation form available to those that attend the event on February 3.”
“We try to get a balance between men and women, and we try to get people from varied backgrounds. We don’t want all Lutheran teachers. We want people that represent the community,” Fridell said. “Then, what we do is we invite their families and any friends that they would like to have invited.”
The day of the performance, Fridell records the songs beforehand. These are later posted on the EWCS website along with a narrative of the elder’s life.
This year, Lesley Poper’s fourth-grade class is honoring Joyce Hand, and Kristin Seidler’s fourth-grade class is honoring Jim Coates.
“My first thought was what an honor that is. I’ve been watching it for years,” said Hand. “I honestly never thought that I would ever get picked.”
Hand is well-known in the community for her many endeavors. Upon moving to Custer, Hand did some babysitting, and then worked in the school as an aide for seven years. After that, she opened her own daycare which she ran for 35 years. Over the years, she took care of a lot of teachers’ children. She even took care of the parent of one of the boys interviewing her in the class.
Along with this, Hand used to volunteer at The Storehouse, the 1881 Courthouse Museum and took care of a woman from Germany.
“I’ve worked with a lot of people in town, and oh my, I’ve taken care of a lot of kids,” said Hand.
These days Hand mostly stays home due to her health, but she keeps busy reading books, doing crafts and taking care of her puppy, Lucy Lou.
Hand said visiting with the children was interesting.
“It was a lot of fun being up there and answering their questions. I had just gotten a new puppy, and I had to have a picture of her to show them,” said Hand.
One little boy asked Hand what she would do if she became the president, and “I said, ‘Well, I’d work on getting our food prices and gas prices down, and I would work on getting some of these bad illegals out of here.’
“And he looks at me real seriously, and he says, ‘And what would you do about property taxes?’ I just started laughing. I mean, it was so cute.”
Songwriter Hanna Honors composed Hand’s song along with Poper’s class, and Hand said she is anxious to hear it. Most of her family and some of her friends are planning to attend the event to celebrate with Hand. As for Hand herself, she is planning to be truly surprised by the evening.
“Nobody has told me too much of anything. They haven’t even told me what time I have to be there,” said Hand, but she added, “It’ll be fun. I’ll enjoy it.”
Meanwhile, Coates was a custodian in the Custer School District for 39 years. However, he is perhaps best known as the “Cookie Monster.”
“We had a staff member that had kids, and I used to pick on them and I would try to take their desserts. Then, it just went from them to all the kids. One day one of the kids called me the Cookie Monster, and it just stuck,” said Coates.
“The kids all know him still. They were just thrilled to be able to write a song for him,” said Marianne, who is the songwriter working with Seidler’s class.
Coates said he was delighted to be asked, and “It’s an honor to be honored by the kids like that.”
For the interview, the children asked Coates all kinds of questions including his favorite music, why he liked his job, how he got his job and how many children he had.
“It was interesting. It was fun,” said Coates.
Coates has family and friends coming to the program to celebrate with him and is looking forward to hearing the song and seeing what the children have done.
Most of all, he is looking forward to “the honor of it and seeing the kids.”
According to Fridell, the impact goes beyond a single evening though. Fridell has had elders tell them that they were at Lynn’s Dakotamart when a child who interviewed them came up and gave them a big hug.
“It’s like the kid had bonded with this person. They just feel like they know this person, and they’re buddies,” said Fridell.
Marianne said, “You can just tell as the kids think about the life of the person and what they’re told, they feel like they really know that person.”
Sometimes the teachers make connections with the elders as well, and they are invited back to class for a Valentine’s Day party or other such things.
“We’ve had people who’ve become volunteers in classrooms because of it because they make that kind of powerful connection,” Fridell.
Along with this, Fridell said, “What we’ve found is that occasionally the songs that children sing end up being played at their funeral because it’s a pretty touching moment. For some of the songwriters, they take it on that they write the song in first person. So when the kids sing the song, they’re singing it as that person. It is kind of their anthem. And some of the kids remember those songs as their anthems too.”
One time, a high school senior in Spearfish came up to Fridell and sang the song he helped write in fourth grade.
“Something really touched him, and he thought it was just important enough to remember that song,” said Fridell. “So I see it as being just a great program to connect the community and to honor people.”
Community members are invited to attend this free event Feb. 3. There will be a reception following the performance. This year’s Master of Ceremonies is Mike Pahl, a former counselor at the elementary school.
To learn more about EWCS, go to elderswis
domchildrenssongsouth
dakota.com.