Reed Strong, Northwest Prime Time’s summer intern, is a senior in Western Washington University’s journalism program. He speaks to Northwest area seniors and baby boomers for the series LIFE LESSONS. Each is asked the same four questions: thoughts on growing older; advice for the younger generation; what are they most nostalgic about; and how the world has changed for the better.
A few days ago, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with local senior Geraldine Hernandez. Born in 1947, she is married with four children and four grandchildren, with another on the way! Hernandez worked as a bank teller and later as a caregiver for seniors with disabilities. She came to Washington a few years ago from Santa Monica, where she was born. “We bought our retirement home in Bakersfield with my daughter and her husband,” says Geraldine. “One day out of the clear blue my son-in-law came home and said, ‘Adios, hasta la vista,’ and he left. I was the only one who was employed at the time. My daughter had been a stay-at-home mom, so we were not able to make our house payments,” reveals Geraldine. “ I have two sons in the state of Washington, and my daughter said ‘I’m going to my brothers’. I said, ‘Well, if you’re taking my grandbaby, I’m gonna follow!’ And so we migrated to Washington, and praise the Lord, my husband got a job, and we got settled.”
What have you found are the best aspects of growing older?
“I think the most pleasurable thing for me is that I’m still healthy. I like to be busy, and I’m about six years older than my husband so I actually have retired. I do collect my social security but I work outside of the home also, and I’m blessed that I’m healthy enough to do that, and I enjoy that. I do yard work, I volunteer for a program at my church. My husband and I have taken up some properties, and I help him do the yard work there, and I also do it for our building complex.”
What’s the best advice you could give to a younger person?
“Find a good church that they could become established in. I feel like churches were put here to help each individual person, that’s what God wanted us to do, to help each other. My sister never attended a church and she passed away, and then I had to be responsible for her, since there was no church or affiliation to call. It was just left on me, and I feel that when you are affiliated with a church, besides being able to attend and hear the word of God, you meet other friends like yourself. You meet someone and can meet their need. I feel that when you have something on a consistent basis to do, you feel like you’re more alive and [it]gives you a reason to get up in the morning, to say today is a good day to have a good day.”
What thing from your childhood are you nostalgic about?
“I miss game night with my parents and my siblings. My parents were very good about playing games at home with us, and that was a very pleasurable activity. We always played and we always enjoyed it. I don’t think we do as much of that in this day and age as we would have done in the olden days.”
What changes in the world do you think are for the better?
“I don’t know if there are any changes that I think are for the better, to be quite honest. I suppose medical is for the better, you have more chances to improve. I’m not so sure that schooling is better. I went to a one-room schoolhouse with kindergarten to 8th grade. We had outhouses and we were out in the woods I lived in Missouri, on a farm of 160 acres, and we actually walked to school. You could go to school barefoot. It was a one-room school with a pot belly school in the middle. You had an outdoor bathroom, one for the boys and one for the girls. If you didn’t do your spelling test or pass it, you got spanked in front of all of the children. We had a wonderful teacher, she would offer to take one or more students home with her every weekend and it was a joyous time, because some of the children did not have the luxuries we have today. Some children would come to school with just banana sandwiches, two slices of bread with mayonnaise and banana. When you got to go to the teachers’ house, you got really good meals. Our science class was interesting; this boy was released to go to the outhouse. He saw a snake eating a frog, he told the teacher, and then that was our science class for the day; we got to see the snake eat the frog. We had wonderful games. It was really a very joyful experience in those days.”
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