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ELMHURST – Several small mason jars are lined up along the wooden shelves of the recently renovated gallery space on the first floor of the Elmhurst Historical Museum.
Each jar contains trinkets and personal items that hold a special memory to the person who sealed it. A tag hangs from the neck of the mason jars with a sentence that starts with “I remember…”
Patti Whitney and her granddaughter Nolee, 7, filled their jar to the top with flowers and white lace. Both carefully placed two photos that featured Whitney and Nolee together. Nolee wrote on the tag how her grandma taught her how to blow out a candle on her first birthday and make a wish.
Nolee is just one of 19 students who came to the Elmhurst Historical Museum on Thursday from Hawthorne Elementary School's first-grade class. Teacher Sue Lindstrom said this field trip was a special way for her students to spend time with their mothers and grandmothers in celebration of Mother's Day.
Lindstrom, who brought her own mother, Evelyn Freitag, along for the trip, said she instructed her students' mothers to bring at least one keepsake. For Lindstrom and her mother, the two decided to bring a miniature-sized milk container. Lindstrom recalled when she was a little girl, she and her mother would visit her aunt and uncle's farm on Grand Avenue, a stretch of land now occupied by car dealerships.
"Everyone has a wealth of memories," said Christena Gunther, the museum's community programs coordinator.
Elmhurst Historical Museum Marketing Director Patrice Roche said the decision to hold the Memory Jar Project in May was to pair it with Mother's Day, Memorial Day and graduation, and the mason jars are merely a tangible item that represents a story shared and weaved through generations.
Roche explained the idea came from the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History in California, where the museum's executive director Nina Simon wrote on the museum's blog that the project is simple – it asks participants to think, to remember and to share a part of their life that made an impact on them.
The purpose of the month-long project is to engage the community and have visitors become a part of the museum, Roche said.
Gunther and Roche said while they encourage participants to add their own personal items, they do provide some craft and art supplies like rocks, seashells and flowers to help jog their memories and to contribute to the mason jars' design.
The Elmhurst Memory Jar Project is scheduled to run through May 31. Projects may be completed during the museum's regular hours, from 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Those who wish to keep their memory jars after the May exhibition may collect them June 2 and 3.
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Know more
For more information on the Elmhurst Memory Jar Project, visit elmhursthistory.org.