"Grandma's Poems: The First Hundred Years" is a three-person presentation based on the life of writer Jami Simon's grandmother, Letha Spillers, a centenarian (101 years old).  Letha Spillers was born in 1899 in Ames, Iowa, her colorful childhood providing many adventures amidst the intoxicating countryside of the burgeoning American Mid-West.

Letha came from hardy stock that kept the farm in the hands of the same family for 130 years.   Through good times and bad, children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, Letha kept writing her poems to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and other important events in the life of a Mid-Western woman.  Her later poems speak of the adjustments necessary for entering an assisted living center, and then a nursing home.  The theme of a large, loving family is the touchstone of this American woman's simple but touching verses.   Nostalgic period songs are interspersed, sung a capella by the professional group of actors, e.g., Alice Blue Gown, Down by the Old Mill Stream, Barnacle Bill the Sailor.   The audience, of course, is encouraged to sing along.  It concludes with a poignant rendering of Stephen Foster's Beautiful Dreamer as a tribute to Letha and the many others joining our growing population of seniors.  Old photographs reproduced as poster blow-ups accompany the material.

The program is approximately 50 minutes in length, after which we welcome poems from the audience.  Viewers have the option of reading or having their work read by the actors.