A big part of Jim Byerly’s coming-of-age in Indiana was traveling across the state.
“I’m one of nine kids, and in order to keep their sanity, Mom and Dad would take us to the state parks on the weekends to a different historical location,” says Byerly. “And then once we ran out of things in Indiana, then we started traveling around, going further out as all of us got a little bit older.”
These days, it’s harder for Byerly, 65, to get out like he used to. He’s one of 30-some daily guests at Still Waters Adult Day Center in Indianapolis, which welcomes folks with dementia and other disabilities.
But thanks to a grant from Indiana Humanities and Indiana Landmarks, Byerly and others can still see, learn, and visit—in a way—art and historic destinations across Indiana. It’s in partnership with the Indiana State Museum.
“It was just unbelievable,” Byerly says of a virtual visit to T.C. Steele State Historic Site in Nashville, Indiana. T.C. Steele was an impressionist painter in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“Brown County is beautiful. And he was able to bring it to life so that even here in Indianapolis where you don’t get to see all of that beauty and surroundings, you could see it in his artwork.”
Seeing Sites in New Ways
Diana Keely is Still Waters’ executive director. She says the weekday center is there so elders can stay in their own homes or with family.
“Our seniors [should] have the programming they would have if they didn’t have dementia,” says Keely, who wrote this program grant. “[It] is very difficult [for] an individual with dementia to do some of these programmings . . . The drive is just too far for someone who has any type cognitive or physical limitations. Or when they get there, it is difficult for them to actually explore and walk the grounds.”
So, the grounds come to them.
Indiana State Museum staff present and explain historical artifacts—Keely recalls a horse brush being one.
“And she would hold it up and she would talk, would get ‘em three scenarios that the horse brush would be used for, and they have to state what they think the horse brush was actually used for. So, it’s a really cool and engaging way to get the guests to think about old items around their house,” she says.
Other sites are land-based and discoverable via video tours. Museum staff would stop in certain areas and give context: the who, what, and when.
Byerly has been to all the sessions.
“Well, I’ll tell you: It was wonderful because they were able to take us without having to travel over there,” he says. “It was quite wonderful. It made you feel like you were actually there.”
Byerly says these tours have rekindled memories of when he’d traveled to these sites before.
“It just reminded me of seeing it in person,” he says. “It was a wonderful thing to relive that and to see it again . . . It helps to renew and helps you to remember.”