Meeting together to re-live some memories of their past, a group gathers at Babcock Place, 1700, to write down stories of historical events they lived through. The project, "MyStory" engages seniors to recall and write down historical events as witnessed through their eyes. Clockwise from bottom center are Thelma Holloway, Joy Polson, Joyce Schild, Gayle Sigurdson, service coordinator at Babcock Place, Bill Simons, Pattie Johnston, senior outreach coordinator at Lawrence Public Library, and Beverly Bronaugh. by Mike Yoder

By Aaron Couch

Sunnyside Avenue has an idyllic name with a not-so-idyllic origin. Just ask Joyce Schild.

Schild, who now is in her late 80s, and her husband moved to Lawrence after World War II. There were no houses available to rent so they ended up in yellow Army barracks that had been converted into temporary housing.

Those yellow barracks were on what is now Sunnyside Avenue, the road on the Kansas University campus flanked by Haworth Hall and Robinson Gymnasium.

“They had cockroaches. They were cold; they were hot. But you were among friends,” Schild said.

Today, Sunnyside Avenue is the only physical legacy of those yellow barracks. But Schild’s memories are a legacy, too.

This month, a group of senior citizens is exploring those types of memories as part of a storytelling series sponsored by the Lawrence Public Library and Babcock Place. It’s not just about reminiscing, but also about comparing the different ways people remember the same historical events.

“There are lots of these moments that we experience differently,” said Gayle Sigurdson, a Babcock Place employee who helps facilitate the story series. “A lot of your values come from those experiences.”

At the group’s first meeting, Pattie Johnston of the Lawrence Public Library asked members to think of the events that made big impressions. Some people named the biggies — Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the JFK assassination.

But many named events that are big in the history books but are not as large in the collective consciousness. It’s those events that illustrate how personal someone’s experience of history can be, Johnston said.

Joy Polson was a newlywed when the Soviet Union cut off the western part of Berlin from the United States. Her husband was in the Army Reserves, and the couple feared war might come. That was the start of the Berlin Airlift and the Cold War, but there was no overt conflict for Polson’s husband to be called to.

“He was that close to getting called up,” she said. “It made us appreciate things more.”

Johnston said people with stories sometimes don’t realize they have them. She has had World War II veterans who claimed they didn’t have anything interesting to say.

To that, she’d say a story adds something that can’t be found anywhere else. She could open an old newspaper and find out when they left for basic training. She could open a history book and read about the battles they were in.

“I cannot find out how you felt when that door closed, and you were on that train going away from home,” Johnston would tell the veterans. “You have to tell me that.”