Grandma Jessie Skillen passed away recently. She was 90 years old.
Jessie Skillen was a registered nurse by trade. She was one of many women trained in the United States Nurses Corps. Her career included working years for the Red Cross and in rural nursing homes across the state of Kansas. Her service to her community was nothing short of remarkable. As a leader in her community she knew that personal connections, the capital you build in your friends, neighbors and your family, is by far the greatest asset you can have in this life.
After her retirement she became a full-time grandmother to ultimately 21 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren. Keeping up with so many people connected to these relatives turned into quite a task when you realize that all 21 grandchildren, their spouses and their children were strewn far and wide across the United States.
She was the only grandparent of mine who was taught how to type, and the only one who ever purchased a computer and an internet connection. This is no small thing giving my grandmother’s location. She and my grandfather lived in the small rural town of Norwich, KS–located about forty miles west of Wichita. This town had no stoplights, very few paved roads, not a single coffee shop, but it had one company in the region in the early 2000s that was willing to sell dial-up internet service, and I believe Grandma Jessie was one of their first customers.
As an new internet user Grandma loved to communicate with us in her family via email, but she didn’t share much original content. Rather, she shared a stream of chain emails. Often including an uplifting poem or Paul Harvey story followed by the explicit instructions to “forward this message to ten people you love.” So, you counted yourself lucky, most of the time, to be included within the number she thought should receive the new forwarded message.
But Grandma really became the connected communicator that I most fondly remember when the internet became more social. The advent of Facebook only amplified her connections to those of us who were fortunate to know her. I can remember the moment grandma showed me how dynamic social media had become. It was 2009 and many of my siblings and cousins had made the trip home to Norwich for Christmas. My two younger sisters, still in high school in Miramar, FL at the time, came in through the front door and were immediately approached by Grandma who had all kinds of questions about their new boyfriends they had just posted pictures of a few weeks earlier. My sisters were shocked. How did grandma know so many details about their personal lives? Easy. She was on Facebook.
More than anyone in my family at that time Grandma Jessie understood the value of connectedness between people and among communities. She invested in each of her grandchildren and connected with each in her own way through the many different platforms we used through our computers and smartphones. In this way, grandma was a true digital humanist.