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They are wise, enlightening, and sometimes stubborn.

They are wise, enlightening, and sometimes stubborn. We all have them … no, not your parents; elderly people. Perhaps it is the returning customer at your job, or the lady you see sitting by herself at church. We see them, and we know them, but do we really know them? If we took the time to sit down and talk with them, what would we gain?

A few Grand View students turned that question into action by meeting with elderly people on the periphery of their lives to dig deeper into who these people really are and what they have accomplished.

Joyce Miller’s Story:
What would you want to be remembered for if you died right now? What stories would you like to be shared? While I was growing up, my mom always told me to make the most of my life. The older I become, the more I realize how true that statement is. When I was in high school, my mom encouraged me to work at the assisted living facility across the road from my school. As much as I cringed at the thought of it, that place actually changed my life.

Joyce Miller, 85, is a woman I will never forget. I remember the exact moment we first met because she was complaining to me about how terrible the food was while the cook was standing right next to me! And after that minute passed, I could tell we were going to get along well.

When I was in high school, I started my first job as a sophomore and planned on keeping it throughout my high school career and then quitting and going to college. Joyce started her first job when she was a junior in high school and kept the same job until she turned 48 when her company closed down. Now take a moment to reread that last sentence because if you do the math, she spent around 31 years at her first job! I spent two and a half years at my first job, and I thought that was long enough.

“I had never written a resume,” Joyce said. “I started my first job young and never thought of getting a new job. I, then, started to attend DMACC (Des Moines Area Community College) in order to gain more education and search for another job.”

I wrote my first resume when I was 15 when applying for a job so this interesting part of Joyce’s story really surprised me. She also said that during her DMACC classes, she was surrounded by young college students and she was 59 at the time. It was a terrifying feeling for her because she could not relate to the other students because of the big age gap. But in the end, Joyce said it was all worth it, and it is never too late to change your life for the better.

Looking back at her high school days, Joyce said that it was very different compared to present day. This generation is consumed with drugs, alcohol, and violence. I could not agree with Joyce more! I shared with her how kids in my high school would hide drugs underneath ceiling tiles in the bathroom when I attended and the thought of that made Joyce uncomfortable.

Joyce said that drugs have many different uses now. Years ago, in her opinion, not many people would use drugs to become “high.” Growing up in my generation, I know many people abuse drugs. The point Joyce was trying to get at was the fact that young kids are becoming more mature faster. They’re also getting more violent.

“When I was younger, I used to live on a farm and had no fear at all,” Joyce said. “If I lived on a farm today, I would be nervous about someone’s car breaking down and walking to my house because of all of the stories I have heard in the past of strangers in the country.”

After listening to Joyce talk about violence and drugs, I could tell that she had strong feelings about those topics. The way her voice gradually became louder made the topic more important. As the topic of conversation became more serious, Joyce opened up about her husband, Ron’s, death.

“My husband bought a motorcycle and he drove it everywhere,” Joyce said. “One day, police found his body in a ditch with the bike on top of him. They couldn’t figure out what caused his death but they assumed he was trying to dodge something in the road and swerved too sharp and the bike landed on top of him.”

Joyce will never forget the day she married Ron. She loves to reminisce on years ago when she was younger and times were simpler. She is passionate about her love story.

Ron lied about his age on their wedding day. Joyce was 21 at the time when her soon-to-be husband was 17. Ron’s parents were totally against the wedding and they wished for it to be annulled. They thought he was too young to get married and he had the rest of his life waiting for him but he knew what he wanted and he wasn’t going to waste any more time. Joyce’s parents, on the other hand, loved the thought of their daughter getting married. They let Joyce borrow their car to drive to Eldora, Iowa to elope.

In those days, it was very easy for Ron to hide his age. Joyce explained that they walked up to court and wrote their names down and the judge asked them if they were both 21 and they both responded yes. They did not have to show any form of identification.

I think love can either be an easy or hard topic to share about. Listening to Joyce talk about her love story made me even more excited for that day to come for me. Many of my friends today think they will never find love but after listening to Joyce’s story, it made me realize that love can overcome any obstacle.

Listening to Joyce’s life stories made me realize how important stories are. Stories make up your whole life and people remember you because of them. No one’s stories should go unnoticed because every individual has something marvelous to share. What did I learn from Joyce? I gained more compassion and respect but most importantly, I learned to listen to my grandparent’s stories because they are a part of me.

Ralph Fry’s Story
When I first began working at a bank this summer, I overheard one of the tellers politely shouting into the phone.

“Yes, the 13 dollars withdrew from your account yesterday, Ralph.”

I asked my lead teller what that phone call was all about. This was how I first became acquainted with Ralph Fry. That day, I learned Ralph was a 97-year-old customer who had developed quite a relationship with our team of tellers. He drove himself to the bank almost weekly despite his age, and he took about five minutes to walk through our lobby to the teller line.

I believed what my boss had told me, but I witnessed this for myself a few days later. Even when Ralph was halfway through the lobby, the other tellers asked themselves out loud, “I wonder what Ralph will talk about today,” knowing he could not hear them unless he was a few inches away from them.

This particular day, I remember he talked about receiving a $50 gift card from his niece for The Olive Garden. Ralph told us in detail how he went to the popular restaurant by himself and sent back three meals because he was not happy with how they tasted. He said they lacked flavor and left us wondering what in the world could satisfy Ralph Fry if Olive Garden could not?

I was the only employee there who had not met him yet, and after five or ten minutes of Ralph talking to my boss, he pointed and asked, “Who’s she?”

From this point forward, I would usually stay in the background while he talked to the main tellers. However, the entire time I would be in awe of this random elderly man who exhibits sudden spurts of life sometimes more than I do. He would call me “cute little thing” once and ask what my name is every single time he visited, but nevertheless, I developed an arbitrary attachment to him.

Every time I see Ralph, I forget that he was once my age: a content young person with much to look forward to. As he reminisces about his high school years, he vividly remembers the taste of those homemade cinnamon rolls. They were made by Mick, a girl that Ralph had befriended at the time of the Great Depression, and she just so happened to make the best cinnamon rolls he had ever tasted. Ralph’s father was killed when he was just a year old, so he spent a majority of his time at Mick’s house, most memorably after competing in his high school’s football games. Mick was not a lover to Ralph but a close friend where comfort and warmth resided.

After departing with Mick and Ralph’s easy high school life, he worked on the railroads in Omaha before the interstate existed. He worked there for 27 years, served in Vietnam, and retired around 1985, 13 years before I took my first breath.

Today, he lives in an apartment in West Des Moines and has no problem maneuvering through life by himself despite being nearly a century old. Ralph has no family besides a niece who lives in Oregon, but even she does not reach out to him often. Ralph has also been married three times, and each time ended in divorce.

Ralph’s age, 97, is miraculous to some, but it also comes with health problems. Ralph said he has eight prescribed pills that he is supposed to take every day, but he rarely takes them as prescribed. “I feel nothin’ when I take them,” Ralph said. “I told my nurses to get them out of my face. I’m not doing what they want me to do.”

Ralph makes several trips to the doctor each week, whether for check-ups or for his age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, which destroys sharp vision with old age. This also evidently deteriorates his under-eye sockets, making them look heavy and clogged with blood. As Ralph’s tellers, we were all used to this, but for a stranger, it is sometimes tough to look at.

He does make an effort to be as strong and useful as he once was, but his health issues, including his AMD, often get in the way. “It’s why I always walk into the bank and ask ‘Where’s Charlie?’ when I guess the boy is right in front of me,” Ralph said about his favorite teller, Charlie. Every time he talks to Charlie, it takes him a few minutes to realize that I am standing behind him, observing. Probably forgot my name again.

I must admit, I hesitate with being quick to judge Ralph. I have to remind myself that at the time Ralph was born and growing up, the world was a completely different place. Calculators were just a few years old, and it would not be until 1973 that the first mobile phone call would be made.

When it comes to technology, “hate it,” Ralph said. “I don’t like usin’ it. I don’t like that I don’t have deposit tickets anymore.” This is in regards to a new bank policy that has swapped physical deposit slips for an electronic scanner to process accurately. He would prefer to do things manually rather than depending on a machine to handle his valuables for him.

Ralph still writes checks out for all his bills monthly and uses his phone mostly just for making calls to ensure his few automatic payments withdrew correctly. “The more technology is involved, the more mistakes happen,” he said.

Ralph attempts to work past all the natural discrepancies between someone his age and someone my age. However, his highs are more rare and his lows are more frequent. He said that he never knows how he will feel the next day, but it is usually mediocre at best. He does not plan his days out, besides doctor’s appointments. This is tough for me to relate to; being a young person with essentially all I need to be content, I have never once had to question how I will feel when I wake up in the morning. Even if I’m having a bad day, I always find some reason to see the light, whether that source is my mom, my outfit, my grades, or just the knowledge that good things are yet to come.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone. “If I’m happy at the time, I’ll sing,” said the 97-year-old. “And if I’m not, I’ll say ‘I’m gonna stop taking these damn pills.’”

“The more, the merrier,” they say. For me, I know I have almost my entire life to look forward to. I often told myself I want to live for as long as possible so I can do as much good as possible. However, the 97 years Ralph has been alive seem to be getting worse and worse. How will I feel when a near century of life easily turns into nothing more than a deteriorating body and a set of kind bank tellers?

Jean Peel’s Story
How does one measure time? For some, it may be through love, travel or simple experiences. For 86-year-old Jean Peel, her time has been measured in all of the these.

Jean is someone my family has known since before my birth. She was a member of the church I attended as a child, the same church my grandparents still attend, and the church my father was raised in. She is someone I was always taught to say hi to and be polite to but someone that I unfortunately didn’t take the time to get to know until I was almost 21 years old.

“I grew up around Austin, in central Texas, in this tiny town by the name of Bastrop, and let me tell you, the interesting things that happened to me in that small town were limited,” Jean said.

After the death of her father early in high school, Jean attended three different high schools due to her mother relocating and eventually decided to live with her grandparents to avoid changing schools again.

Jean said the death of her father altered the course of her life but made her have a great appreciation for her mother, Sue, who she said “was a very special, independent lady who never let anything get her down. She lived to be 97. I wonder if I have her genes.”

One thing Jean’s mother did for her was lead her to a passion of hers, which eventually turned into her career.

“I did get interested in acting and drama (through plays) while I was in the small town, which was how I majored in drama (at) The University of Texas,” she said. “My mother said I could major in (drama) if I (combined it with) education, so I could get a teaching certification, although I didn’t get into teaching until 18 or 19 years later.”

Jean met her husband, Brian, during a summer at home through a cousin before returning to the University of Texas and married him during spring break of her senior year of college.

She opted to work in an administrative office at the university following her graduation just before her husband, Brian, was deployed with the Navy during the Korean War. Life as a military spouse was difficult but prepared her for an even greater struggle many years later.

“My husband lived for 15 years with prostate cancer,” she said. “I think one of my favorite times in my life is when we were both retired. We spent a lot of time at the lake fishing and on our boat. It was pretty hard when he died; the last 6 weeks I had been taking care of him, I didn’t get a lot of rest myself, and then he was gone shortly after.”

Jean tries to stop by his gave every Sunday after church to make sure the flowers placed by his tombstone are intact. “Brian was such a big part of my life,” Jean said. “I didn’t want to lose him, but I did not want him to suffer any more.”

Jean has had her own medical problems, including cancer twice and a brain aneurism.

“My husband’s support helped me get through my time after my aneurism a lot, and although he had already had cancer, he was very supportive of me and tried to make life easy for me,” she said. “I felt so close to God while I was going through all of that.”

Jean spends her time at church and with her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren when she has time. She still lives at home, where she has a lawn care service come take care of her yard and the inside cleaned by a maid. Her groceries are delivered. Jean said the retirement home life just isn’t for her, and she’s not quite ready to leave her home and all her things just yet.

The conversations I had with Jean surprisingly made me emotional in more ways than one. For one, I wish more than anything that I would have had more time with my Oma, who immigrated to the United States from Germany and who had so many life experiences I wish I would have asked her about before she passed away when I was 16. It also made me emotional about the years coming for myself and the memories I hope to make in my young-adult life, and it made me wonder if, when the time comes and my parents become elderly or homebound, they will be taken care of properly by myself or one of my sisters. Will they be happy and satisfied with their life? Will their time, and my time be measured appropriately?

For Jean, her time keeps ticking, and each day brings something new.

“I often wonder why I keep going through these tough times but still remain intact,” she said. “God has some kind of plan for me; perhaps He thinks I haven’t done everything I should.”