Gertrude Lobrot, 93, hunched over and tucked her arms in like wings. She swung them rapidly as she described the pet chicken, Fireball, she had as a little girl.
"I wasn't a very nice little girl," she said. "If I didn't want friends to come and play, I would use my chicken to scare them off."The eighth-graders gathered around her - Arica Craven, Jeff Stephens and Stephanie Williamson - giggled, then asked her about school when she was young.
Forty-eight students from Midvale Middle School's accelerated learning program gathered at Woodland Park recently to interview senior citizens as part of "Building Bridges," a collaboration between MESA (Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement) and Heritage Management, which owns Woodland Park.
Three students interviewed each of the elderly subjects. They will write biographies of each of them. Jordan School District students have visited three other care centers, as well. Heritage hopes to raise money to print the biographies into books that will be given to each participant, said Stacy Whittemore of Heritage Management.
The youthful visitors giggled when Lobrot described going down a fire escape during fire drills in her school days. Craven learned that her parents share a wedding anniversary with Lobrot, whose husband Trygve died last year.
Lobrot, a teacher before she retired, was comfortable and amusing as she took the children on an abbreviated look at the last nine decades. She talked of World War I and hearing her grandmother cry in the night because they'd been told her uncle was missing in action (he later came home). She described the Depression and the first streetcar in Salt Lake City. The first movie she ever saw was "Birth of a Nation." Her father got his first car when he was 60; but Lobrot (born Rodgers) never learned to drive.
Across the room, Clara Ahlander told students Sherrie Haertel, Jill Brown and Sairah Khan about her first plane trip. Ahlander, 100, flew to Billings, Montana, two decades ago when one of her sons died.
Although social worker Stacy Napp repeated questions because Ahlander has trouble hearing, she spoke easily and earnestly of a century of change.
"I think this is an eye-opening experience for students," said teacher Sue Stacy. "They had some fears about coming here and now they're having a ball."
Most of the students have grandparents in their 60s and 50s, added teacher Debbie Swensen. Dealing with people who are quite elderly is new - and good for them.
Craven, Stephens and Williamson agreed.
"It was kind of what I expected," Craven, 14, said. "But she was more deep than I thought she'd be. Her philosophies made it more interesting."
"She had a lot of feelings about different topics," said Williamson, 13. "Sometimes there's a stereotype of the old as not thinking."
"Not her," added Stephens, 13. "She was open and remembered a lot of detail. We got a lot of information and description."