Carolina Forest school students look forward to monthly time with ‘Grandfriends’

Barney Brueck was so excited when he was asked to read “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to the students at Gateway Academy in Carolina Forest that he went out and bought the book and practiced reading it over and over so he didn’t make a mistake.

Brueck, a resident of the Brightwater retirement community in Surfside Beach, said that as a young man, he loved reading to his own children and grandchildren and he longed to share the story with the Gateway students.

Brueck was just one of many residents earlier this month eager to see their “grandfriends” from the school.

“We all have children and some have grandchildren, and they’ll tell you, ‘This one reminds me of so-and-so,’” Brueck said of the retirement living residents. “The kids enjoy it and the adults anjoy it just as much as the kids do.”

The idea of Gateway’s pre-kindergarten students meeting monthly with Brightwater residents began in September when Gateway decided it wanted to reach out to another organization in the community, said Jenny Warner, assistant director at Gateway.

“The benefits are just amazing on both sides,” Warner said. “To sit and watch the interaction between the children and the people at Brightwater is really a beautiful thing to watch.

“They really interact in a way that, at first, I really wasn’t sure how it was going to go. I wasn’t sure how our kids were going to react, but they have really built a close relationship with each other. Both sides look forward to it every month.”

Brueck said one of the students in a prior month was shy and quiet, so he reached out to the child.

“I told her to sit on my lap,” Brueck said. “The next thing you know, I have 10 kids hanging all over me on the chair.”

Both organizations have become angels to each other — the children seeing smiling faces that are now familiar to them and the retirement community welcoming the energy that only 4- and 5-year-olds can bring.

Wendy Gatzke, social director at Brightwater, said the group of adults who attend has grown since the two groups began to meet.

“They’ve loved it since the minute we did it,” Gatzke said of Brightwater’s residents. “They are our best-attended events.”

The holiday program where Brueck read to the children was held in a room that was overflowing with people wanting to see the children at Christmastime.

“Mostly the buzz is they really enjoy it,” Gatzke said. “You feel warm and fuzzy even after the kids leave.”

“I think it’s going to be fun to watch it grow.”

Warner said the two groups will get together in January to make fleece blankets for homeless people in Horry County. She said the program hits home for her because her mother is in a senior facility in Illinois.

“I know what it means to her to have people come in and really care about them and spend quality time with them,” Warner said. “It really has been a good relationship and a close relationship between us.”

This story was originally published December 23, 2015 at 12:04 AM with the headline "Carolina Forest school students look forward to monthly time with ‘Grandfriends’."