60 OMAHA s u l p
Ocotober 2020
L
isa Worrall opened the
door to reveal an explosion of color. The retired teacher blushed and stepped back, revealing triangular, multihued, painted, and papered steps leading up into her world. A person might squint at the dazzling brightness of it all, like being exposed to the sun after staying too long indoors. But this is her indoors, a brilliant array of playful pinks, steadfast blues, and psychedelic purples.
“I found my voice in colors. It’s who I am,” the self-taught artist explained.
60+ Active living
story by Lisa Lukecart
Late to a Fabulous Party
Retired Teacher Finds Her Voice In Color
Worrall, 65, arrived “late to this fabulous party.” She always thought of herself as a teacher, working with special education and first-grade students for 36 years. Even so, Worrall once dressed up in her grandmother’s red beret and her father’s denim apron on Career Day at Westside’s Prairie Lane Elementary School. “I’m going to be an artist someday,” Worrall quipped to her students. Worrall’s creative side surfaced when she inherited her grandmother’s antiques. The furniture ricocheted drab vibes in her space. Paint and décor were costly items on a teacher’s salary. Instead, inspiration emerged in the form of fun papers. Elementary school students cut, glued, and created with the same beautiful results. A flower, for instance, pasted onto a pink background with yellow star-shaped petals added vibrant hues to her classroom. Colleagues and friends noticed her talent and soon asked her for portraits, murals, and illustrations. Worrall, at that time, had few spare hours in the day as a single mother with a full-time job. All of it changed in 2010. Worrall designed a Christmas card for friends and family. She loved how her students wore mismatched hats, coats, and scarves in the winter. Worrall drew her vision on tracing paper then cut out a final version. Four children gazed at an evergreen tree with a yellow star on top. White-painted, dotted snowflakes drifted down in night sky, adding a simplistic touch of nostalgia. ›
photography By Bill Sitzmann // design by Derek Joy OCTOBER 2020 • 60 PLUS
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riends thought
the cards could sell. Deborah Conley took a bundle with her to Methodist Hospital where she works as a senior executive. Another friend headed to The Bookworm. “I have seen her totally blossom ever since then. It just exploded,” Conley said. “I think as people grow older they have more life experiences to determine what they want to do next. I always say, ‘you retire to something, not from something.’ It opens up avenues.” Worrall still seemed unsure of her artistic abilities but didn’t want to waste the opportunity. She strode into the gift shop at Joslyn Art Museum and showed them to retail manager Jane Precella. Rather than rebuffing the cards, Precella asked to see more work. Worrall felt like an imposter. What did a special education teacher know about logos, pricing, and packaging? She didn’t even know how to create an invoice and had only a couple of weeks to figure it all out before her product needed to be delivered. After school, ideas poured out of her. Her confidence grew as she sketched faces with her pencil, snipped paper with scissors, and patiently placed small details with her tweezers. The logo became a girl walking on a tightrope in a red beret just like she wore all those years ago in her classroom. Worrall delivered her cards by deadline. “I felt like a total imposter, but I did it,” Worrall said. Dundee Gallery called the next day. Forty of her cards sold in one day and a new order was placed for a Valentine’s Day line. She moved holiday to holiday that first year while working over breaks, nights, and weekends. The business, Iddy Biddy Boo Design (named from her brother’s nickname for her, “Iddy” and her sister’s, “Boo Boo”) took off. Worrall figured close to 50,000 cards have been purchased over the past 10 years, and her confidence increased along with it. The myriad array of colorful cards on display in her basement is a breathtaking mix of emotion. Old photographs are sometimes used as concepts. A photograph is re-created on a card of her son Jeff on his first birthday in a devil’s costume. Another of her grandmother Mimi in a wedding dress from the 1920s era. Or a lesson learned about letting go from her school days when a caterpillar // 64 //
60 PLUS • OCTOBER 2020
was released from the cage after changing into a butterfly. Others contain poignant messages. A breast cancer survivor with flowers on her bald head is opened to the words, “Strong is the new beautiful.” A card with a mother and daughter dressed in flowing red superhero capes strongly suggests, “Behind every girl who believes in herself stands a mother who believed first.”
Even her darker works contain some light. The “Marionette” contains a sinister faceless puppet master controlling a dancer. At first, the ballerina looks frail but on closer inspection a pair of scissors are held in one hand while a smirk rolls across her face. Iddy Biddy Boo Design has been seen in museums, bookstores, and art galleries.
“The other day a lady came in specifically to find a sympathy card because someone she knew died of COVID in his 40s… it was sold out. Lisa had it to me within two hours.” -Patti Van Buren, owner, House of J “The other day a lady came in specifically to find a sympathy card because someone she knew died of COVID in his 40s… it was sold out. Lisa had it to me within two hours,” said House of J owner Patti Van Buren, who is collaborating with Worrall on an open house on Oct. 21. It’s true that the cards don’t appear as if created from cut paper. An original work stands striking and immense before it is printed. Worrall saw a tightrope walker at the circus fall to her death as a child. The piece titled “The Tight Rope Walker” showcases risk-taking just like her stepping into the art world. All of it is made from paper, except the face, which is drawn with a pencil. She made the tight rope walker’s petticoats from women’s literature, editions of the 1937 New York Times, a Braille book, and musical notes. The skirt is white vintage with gold dots, the vest two-cent stamps, and the cuffs chocolate wrappers. The blonde clinched some of the tightrope in one hand, showing the last resource, as she walks over a town in her fishnet stockings and boots. The other hand holds a parasol. Around the edges of the frame are curled signatures of all the women in Worrall’s life who surrounded her. Even her great grandmother’s ancestors make an appearance since she photocopied original letters from that time on the Oregon Trail. “She is on a tight rope coming from somewhere, but still going,” Worrall added.
The company branched out to puzzles, wall art, ornaments, and needlepoint. Worrall needed to know if a national market was out there. It was time to cut the ties and move on to bigger endeavors. A breaking out point came two years ago at AmericasMart in Georgia. Two women approached her stand and mentioned their boss specifically told them to see her booth. It turns out they were retail buyers from the Biltmore Estate and wanted her to re-create a scene from the movie Titanic for their current costume exhibit. The deadline was a tight two weeks, so Worrall designed Rose in her black and white dress as soon as she returned home. “I was so excited and wanted to show them I was serious about working with them,” Worrall said. The Biltmore Estate also commissioned her to re-create the Vanderbilt home. This project seemed a bit more daunting. Sure, she had designed her mother’s house, but nothing this elaborate on such an architectural scale. After being flown out in June 2018, she spent the rest of the summer constructing it. Some windows required almost 50 bits of paper. It was finished by September for the Christmas exhibit. The artist’s goal, though, has never been to make money, but to do something different with her life. “I’m like Donny Osmond is to music, but not like a Beethoven,” she explained. “People relate to it and respond. If I make a connection, I’m happy.”
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OCTOBER 2020 • 60 PLUS
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60+ NOSTALGIA · story by Jeff Lacey · design & illustration by Derek Joy
Pencils, Paste, Phonetics
A Zoom Through School Supply Aisles of the Past
T
he seasonal aisle of grocery stores in late July and early August features a cardboard kiosk leaved with fliers from local elementary schools that detail the requisite school supplies for each grade. The same store might also display a few of those supplies, mercilessly searched and disheveled. These are sure signs of back-to-school shopping. However, the quest for perfect backto-school supplies is not a new phenomenon. Who remembers these back-to-school items from the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s?
Big Chief writing tablets These were a common classroom staple item in the 1950s and 1960s. Produced by the Western Tablet Co. in St. Joseph, Missouri, the tablets consisted of lined newsprint paper bound in a red card stock cover depicting a Native American in full headdress. Although politically incorrect, these were especially used in elementary schools across America, but were eventually eclipsed by the rise of the spiral notebook.
Metal lunch boxes with thermoses Those who were not interested in eating the cafeteria’s mystery meat had the option of bringing their own lunch, often including a sandwich made of plastic-wrapped cheese, processed meat, and yellow mustard; an individual can of gelatinous chocolate pudding; a piece of fruit; and soup or a drink in a plastic thermos that fit perfectly into one-third of the box. While the contents may have been conformist, the boxes themselves were key—and now, sometimes pricey. A lunchbox featuring cartoon space family The Jetsons made in 1963 can sell for upward of $1500 online, while the more popular Walt Disney school bus can be bought for around $50.
Mucilage in a rubber-nippled bottle While not as delicious as paste, this dark amber adhesive was also nontoxic. Mucilage, a naturally occurring plant exudate, also offered the user the chance to pick the crusty crystals from the thinlipped rubber applicator after extended use. LePage’s Mucilage, in a clear bottle, was the most commonly used brand.
Paste
Steno tablets
While not intended as food, this product was ubiquitous in 1950s and 1960s elementary schools. Packaged in bulk, and served to students on paper towels or scraps of paper, adhesive paste was a staple of classrooms because it was a fairly effective adhesive and, importantly, nontoxic. Paste was often mint-scented, and therefore, to the curious gradeschooler, irresistible.
The odds are good that if you went to high school in the 1950s or 1960s, you might have taken a shorthand class, which often required a yellow-paged steno tablet. These were used to practice shorthand, a system of abbreviated writing that allowed the recorder to write as fast as a person spoke, and was commonly taught in American high schools. There were different types of shorthand, including Gregg Shorthand and Pittman Shorthand, and were considered valuable skills for professions like journalists, secretaries, and law enforcement officers.
Phonetic word wheels Paper wheels held together with brads have gone the way of the calculator, but from the 1950s through the 1970s, students learned spelling, vocabulary, word recognition, and more by aligning the outer wheel containing consonants and consonant combinations with the inner wheel containing syllables. Str-ange.
Slide top pencil case These were all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s. Unlike pencil boxes of earlier decades, often made of wood, these were made of that fantastic material called plastic, two-toned, and the top slid back and disappeared into the bottom half, making it easier to grab a writing tool than from wooden pencil boxes, which tended to expand and contract with weather, meaning good luck trying to extract a pencil from it during the humid Nebraska days in September. Vintage plastic pencil boxes range from $25-$50 online.
Song flutes (also known as recorders) The Fitchhorn Song Flute says right on the box “Always in tune,” but anyone who survived late elementary school knows that is false advertising. Often a precursor to band, these cheap plastic flutes were used during music class to irritate the teacher adjacent to the music room and instill pride and bad hearing in parents who listened to their kids perform “Jingle Bells” at the school’s annual Christmas performance.
Vacuum-mounted pencil sharpeners Do you recall ever wrestling with the lever on a vacuum-mounted pencil sharpener? The Boston pencil company, which started in 1899, sold hundreds of thousands of these sharpeners during their existence, and was eventually bought by the Xacto company. A vacuum-mounted pencil sharpener is still available online for around $20 for those up to the challenge of getting it to stick.
Writing utensils of yore The ACT, SAT, and other tests helped popularize No. 2 pencils, these days by far the mostly commonly produced pencils in the United States, but they weren’t always. In the 1930s, it was discovered that the Scantron machines used to score the SATs were unable to read the scratches from the harder lead of a No. 1 pencil, or the smudges from the softer lead of a No. 3. While it’s easy to grab a package of No. 2 lead pencils at the local school-supply store, those in need of a softer or harder lead often wind up paying higher prices at the art supply store. Those who learned how to write in cursive prior to the late 1970s likely learned the Palmer method of handwriting as scribed by an approved Palmer method fountain pen.
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Pat Corbitt Escapes From Reality
Lord of the Manor, Treasure-Hunting Pirate 60+ PROFILE // STORY BY JENNIFER LITTON // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
B
ETWEEN DROPPING
students off and picking them up on his Ralston School bus route, Pat Corbitt, 62, spends his time managing operations for his escape room business, Omaha’s Industrial Escape Rooms. When the pandemic abruptly shut Omaha down in March, his days shifted to the escape room full-time. Corbitt helps others escape the day and travel to an alternate world using their imagination and some cleverly built theme rooms. One such room is set in an 1890s London manor house. Another pirate-themed room gives players a chance to steal hidden treasure. He says he enjoys giving people something to work with when they visit his entertainment venue. Players are given one hour to search the room for hidden objects, solve puzzles, and unlock the locks to complete the objective and win the game.
Corbitt, who was raised in Texas, was born on Oct. 3, 1957, the day before Sputnik 1 was launched by the former Soviet Union. He said he likes to think of himself as one of the last pre-space age babies. “I really do enjoy science fiction.” His favorite movie is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “I have, on occasion, told people that— should the police ever find my car abandoned out in the country and there’s an odd circular patch in the field nearby— tell them I went willingly.” His several years as a manager at Douglas Theatres likely contributed to his fascination with the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
“I think it would be amazing to actually meet an alien. I like to think that there’s actually people out there. And they’re just too smart to come down and go ‘hello.’ I’m not entirely sure that the human race is ready to be let loose on the universe.” Corbitt first came to Omaha by way of Offutt during his 14-year stint with the Air Force. After spending six years in Omaha, he decided that he liked the city. “In spite of the winters and the taxes, I’ve grown to really love the city. It’s just the right size that I like. Dallas is way too big for me.” “People would say there is nothing to do in Omaha and they’re idiots,” Corbitt said. “There really is a lot to do.” Corbitt likes to think that he is adding more diversity to the entertainment landscape with his newest project, Industrial Escape Rooms. He got the idea after reading about escape rooms in a magazine. He thought, “Oh, I can do that.” He attended a trade show and purchased pieces to create Moriarty’s Parlor, a Sherlock Holmes-themed room. The previous owner traveled to Omaha to help him set it up, teach him how the puzzles were done, which furniture to buy, and how to give hints to players when they get stuck. “The way I run games is I tell them when you’re ready for a hint, just give me a big group wave, and I’ll come in and get you back on track.”
Things really started taking off for him in December 2019. He said that being a homeowner has helped him in his new job as owner of the escape rooms because he works with his hands. He also credits time he spent working at Regal Awards. “I actually learned how to do a type of engraving while I was at the Air Force. So I began engraving with them.” He also built trophies and learned sandblasting. His time at Regal Awards helped him learn how to put things together and build things, which are skills he uses quite a bit now building games. He said that the fastest anyone has ever solved a game is about 35 minutes. He said that he’s only had a few groups that fell into the “deadly serious, hate-to-lose category.” “At the end of their game, there were not a lot of smiles.” Most patrons find spending an hour at Industrial Escape Room is good, oldfashioned fun. Corbitt said that quite a few people say they like the amount of details in his game rooms. “They like the amount of puzzles and the difficulty of the puzzles.” One reviewer on Yelp.com recently said of their time there, “We had a good experience. It’s fun to see how your family operates under pressure and trying to work together.” Visit industrialescaperooms.com for more information.
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60+ FEATURE // STORY BY JENNA GABRIAL GALLAGHER // DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION BY DEREK JOY
Building Connections Through Lifelong Learning Continuing Education Expands Options and Builds Community
“There’s a pretty significant number of the Baby Boomer generation who want to stay relevant and connected.” -Gary Girard
E
SSAYIST MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
once said of Socrates, “There is nothing more notable than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”
Older adults in Omaha are following this Socratic method for enriching their lives and engaging with others through myriad continuing education opportunities throughout the city—and the offerings just keep growing. “The Kroc Center has always had a history of robust programming for physical activities that appeal to older adults, including aquatic exercise, strength maintaining, and Zumba,” said Glenda Wood, who recently started her third year as senior life specialist at the Kroc Center, “I came onboard to create a more holistic approach.” This has included partnerships with organizations including the Visiting Nurse Association, the Alzheimers Association, and a local law firm specializing in elder law to host lunch-and-learns on topics related to aging issues—from brain and body health to finances to sharing final wishes with one’s family. They have offered a Life Stories series, in which participants gather for eight weeks to write on a different autobiographical topic each week, and various sewing, quilting, and crafting classes, often led by older adults themselves. “We’re trying to build toward a volunteer army of people who want to share their interests and talents with others,” Wood said. In addition to the programming specifically created for people over 55, one of the goals of the Kroc Center is for all programming to be intergenerational. Older adults are also regular fixtures in arts programming, such as pottery classes and a drum circle, alongside younger students, and sometimes it’s all in the family. “One of our members, who is 65, would come to our Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Tai Chi class and she started bringing her mother, who is 88, to our Wednesday Crafts and Conversation class,” Woods explained. “As a caregiver, she really appreciated that this gave them both a way to get out of the house.”
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60+ FEATURE
W
OOD SAID THAT THE SOCIAL ELEMENT IS as important to older
adults as the learning, which is why programming with meals, including a potluck the first Wednesday of every month (during nonpandemic times) is always a big draw. “If you offer food, more people will attend.”
That’s how Donna Van Riper, a retired music teacher, started getting more involved with older adult education. Van Riper, who is 76, was first drawn to the Kroc’s aquatics classes after a serious pool accident at her former health club. “At first I only interacted with the staff. They would notice that my walking was improving and they’d encourage me. Then I started waving to people in the classes as I walked down the hallway. Eventually, I went to a potluck, and started getting to know people, and now I try to go to as many classes and lunch-and-learns as possible,” Van Riper said. Although the Kroc reopened on June 1, not all of its programming is back up and running, and many older members are still cautious about returning to public spaces. Van Riper has stayed in touch with her Kroc friends over the phone and via a private Facebook group that Wood set up for that purpose. “Just the other day, I was walking in the park and I ran into someone I know from my cross-country skiing aquatics class. We both just had the biggest smiles on our faces. We all have a real connection,” Van Riper said, later noting an incoming call was from a 92-year-old friend she knows from the pool.
“We have offered a watercolor course for older adults for about 10 years and we started to notice was that it was the same students enrolling in it, quarter after quarter. They were developing their own social network and becoming more and more advanced in their work. That indicated to us that our older students wanted more communityrelated courses.” -Gary Girard
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Gary Girard, executive director of continuing education at Metropolitan Community College, said that the sense of community is also central to the DNA of MCC Explore, Metro’s lifelong learning program for students aged 62 and older. “We have offered a watercolor course for older adults for about 10 years and we started to notice was that it was the same students enrolling in it, quarter after quarter. They were developing their own social network and becoming more and more advanced in their work. That indicated to us that our older students wanted more community-related courses.” Like at the Kroc Center, MCC Explore’s financial classes, including those centered around retirement planning, Medicare, and Social Security, are popular, as are classes on aging wellness and lifestyle topics. The college has partnered with organizations such as Home Instead Senior Care to answer the call for classes that meet the needs of the modern aging population. “We have a community of learners who increasingly want to remain educated and it’s our responsibility to provide relevant courses that make them engage in critical thinking,” Girard said, adding that technology courses are also a hot ticket. “There’s a pretty significant number of the Baby Boomer generation who want to stay relevant and connected,” Girard said of classes such as Appy Hour for Seniors, which is designed specifically for mobile smart phone users and meets on Zoom.
With several campuses and satellite campuses around the city, MCC is able to offer a level of flexibility that appeals to older adults. They even have a variety of “lost arts” classes, such as upholstery, spinning, and weaving, in the New North Makerhood District. “We’ve had several older folks enrolled in courses, like upholstery, that started as a hobby and turned into a second income for them,” Girard said, adding that one student, in her mid-80s, created a handmade wedding basket, full of gifts she had learned to craft from various MCC classes, for her granddaughter. With a few exceptions—like the Italian wine pairing class that traveled to Italy for nine days—most of MCC’s classes are available at half-tuition for students over 62 years old, which makes continuing education more accessible to those on a fixed income. Accessibility is also central to the mission of Arts for All. “Our classes are very affordable, but we don’t turn anyone away if they can’t afford the tuition,” said Juliana Taber, who directs the nonprofit with classes in churches and community centers throughout the Omaha area, as well as on Zoom. They have held art classes specifically designed for visually impaired students and routinely make modifications to musical instruments and art supplies to accommodate the needs of students. “We see a lot of older adults joining younger family members, such as a grandfather who’s been taking guitar lessons with his two grandsons, as well as retirees who are getting back into a hobby or finding new ones, now that they have more time. So much of it is about staying active and the social aspect,” Taber said. Like at the Kroc Center, Arts for All encourages the students to become the teachers when they’re particularly passionate about a subject. “We have several seniors that are teaching for us part time. They have the experience and skills to share and we are lucky to have them.” That feeling is echoed by those in every echelon of continuing education for older adults throughout Omaha. As Van Riper put it, “You come back home from a class and you feel nurtured for the whole day.”