Hard to believe it's been 15 years since a bunch of young people got to see their work in print, but all those young people have achieved some pretty monumental feats in their lives since the Beautiful Bonner History book was published in the early 1990s. I'm gonna talk about that project this Saturday while doing a reading at the Bonner County Centennial celebration at the fairgrounds.
On Saturday, I wish there were time to mention each and every of the 70 or so students who participated in that project because each has his or her own unique story to tell. Back then, however, they were telling stories about folks who'd lived in the community for a few decades. Originally, we wanted everyone featured to have lived here for 50 years, but we had to lower our standards to 40 for various reasons.
During the three months or so that we worked on the project, those kids put up with a lot of cheerleading from their English teacher about how much they were going to appreciate this assignment some day. Most of them interviewed longtimers they'd met at the Old McFarland Inn (anyone remember that one; I think it's now a title company, and it's located on the corner of First and Hwy 95 South as you head out across the Long Bridge). My colleague and friend, Judy Hunt, the French teacher, came up with the idea because she knew the proprietors, and she thought it would be neat to connect young people with oldsters in that historic house.
So, one afternoon we boarded the school buses, went to the Inn and spent a couple of hours visiting during an afternoon tea. If only someone had videoed the event, we would have had a wealth of information for the museum, but it was a writing assignment, and it involved getting acquainted, selecting a candidate, interviewing, writing, interviewing some more, if necessary, revising, writing, revising, writing and polishing to the best of one's ability as a sophomore in high school.
The students did a magnificent job of capturing their individual interviewees, and the resulting stories, all packaged together in Beautiful Bonner, provide a potpourri of historical information about this area laced among the individual anecdotes of each individual who told how they got here and what they did to survive here. Most of the kids went to the homes of their inteviewees and described the atmosphere in which their subjects operated in their daily routines.
I've been skimming through the stories, and, though I'm sure a few would love to have a chance to do a little more writing polish now that they're adults, these kids succeeded at the overall goals of the assignment: they got to see their work in print and they provided a sense of permanence for each individual interviewed. I read through these stories from time to time and enjoy them more with each reading. Why? Many of the interviewees are no longer living. The sophomores who graduated in 1992 kept their memories and their stories alive for many generations to enjoy.
I'm looking forward to trumpeting these students' efforts and doing a little bragging about some of them in the process. Plus, there's a pretty fun story in my new book to go along with it all. And, there's a phenomenal young lady among the group who's featured in that story. This young lady taught me a few years after that assignment an awful lot of about the value of what we offer our students as teachers. I'm very proud of what all of those kids did, and as the county celebrates its centennial, I'll be celebrating the opportunity to direct some public attention to their valuable work in the history book.
See you at the fairgrounds Saturday at 11 a.m.
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