April-June, 2003

Seniors' Health

Book of Marriages: St. John’s Seniors project focuses on married life

Jesse and Bonita Cunningham of Springfield will celebrate their 68th wedding anniversary in September and have some advice for those tying the knot.

They say the secret to staying happily married is working toward common goals and not giving up on the relationship. Earlier this year, the Cunninghams chronicled their years together and put their words of advice about marriage down on paper when they participated in St. John’s Seniors Book of Marriages project. The Book of Marriages is the fifth Storytellers project that St. John’s Seniors Coordinator Valerie Griffin has supported since the first project began in 2000. Other Storytellers projects include the Ethnic Life Stories Storytellers project and a Storytellers project for people with chronic diseases.

Since creating St. John’s Seniors Storytellers program, Griffin has spoken at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tenn., and says storytelling is gaining popularity as a therapeutic practice in health care.
“I was amazed – we packed the house at the festival. People in the health care industry came to find out how storytelling can be helpful with their patients,” Griffin said. “At that point, I realized that a lot had not been done in health care using storytelling as a therapeutic practice.”

The Storytellers projects allow older adults to tell their life stories to a “storykeeper,” who then transcribes the tapes from their interviews and works with them to compile the interviews and photos into a bound book to enjoy with their friends and family. St. John’s Auxilian and Seniors member Eleanor Williamson was the Cunninghams’ storykeeper and interviewed them at their home.
“I’ve run across a lot of really long marriages since I’ve worked in St. John’s Seniors, and I wanted to celebrate that with them,” Griffin says. “We were also interested in finding out how these couples made it through the tough times and how being there to care for each other affected their health.”

The Cunninghams met at college in Louisville, Ky., and married in 1935, when he was 27 and she was 23. Jesse’s pastoral work, which was complemented by Bonita’s interest in mission work, took them to various churches across the Midwest. His last appointment was as associate pastor of South Haven Baptist Church. He retired from there in 1993.

“Some of our best times were when we were at South Haven, ministering to senior adults,” Bonita says. We went on trips to Wyoming and the ocean. Some of the people we took on those trips had never even seen the ocean before. We’ve had a good life.”

If you would like more information about St. John's Seniors Storytellers projects, please call Valerie Griffin at 417-885-2449.