Nitzayah Schiller and Tim Cunningam didn’t know each other six months ago. After all, she’s a 24-year-old San Francisco transplant working in landscape architecture, and he’s a senior living at Rhoda Goldman Plaza. But when they met, they hit it off immediately.
It wasn’t happenstance — both signed up for a program of Jewish Family and Children’s Services that matches 15 young adult volunteers with 15 senior residents at Rhoda Goldman Plaza, an assisted living and memory care complex in San Francisco.
The pairs meet three times over several months, during which the volunteers interview the seniors and learn their life stories. JFCS NextGen volunteers then write up the stories, which are displayed alongside color-pencil portraits of the seniors by San Francisco artist Carly Francis. The program culminates in a gallery reception where the work is on view and participants and family members can meet one another.
Francis, 29, loves the creative role she plays in the Intergenerational Portraiture Project. “There’s something about a face that I love,” she said. She also sees beauty in older people and points to “a really backwards mentality we have with getting older and what we consider beautiful or not.”
Growing up, Francis was close to her great-grandmother, who fled Austria in 1939 and lived until she was 101. “She was my favorite person and I was her favorite person, which is really funny, considering she was 98 and I was in middle school.”
Francis was already volunteering in another intergenerational JFCS program as a NextGen volunteer and had been meeting weekly with Vera Gertler, 90, when she noticed a photograph of Gertler’s mother hanging on the wall. She took a photo of it for reference and later returned with a finished colored pencil sketch.
Gertler, who was battling dementia, recognized it instantly.
“That’s my mom,” Gertler told Francis.
That prompted Francis to reach out to Danit Hetsroni, JFCS’ senior program manager, to explore how she might bring her artistic practice into her volunteer work. The Intergenerational Portraiture Project, which just completed its second round, was led this time by Sara Feinman and Carly White, members of the JFCS NextGen Council.
The program “fills a void of loneliness in the most Jewish way,” Hetsroni told J. “‘L’dor vador’ [generation to generation] is really the best way to describe it. We’re able to learn directly from a living tradition and fulfill a mitzvah.”
For many participants, the experience has evolved beyond a one-time project. That is true for Schiller, who said she was initially drawn to the project’s setup. “I really loved the idea of highlighting someone’s life,” she said.
After completing a questionnaire and interview, she was matched with Cunningham, 83, a retired industrial designer. They had much in common, it turned out.
Cunningham was born in Tucson, grew up in Southern California and later relocated to Pittsburgh to pursue his career in design. He fell in love with the city and stayed for years, until illness, the loss of both his first and second wives and a stroke reshaped his life. Eventually, Cunningham’s daughter, Sachi, brought him back to California, and six months ago he moved into Goldman Plaza.
When he learned about the portraiture project shortly after his arrival, Cunningham signed up eagerly.
“I wanted to meet as many people as I could,” he said. “So I said yes.”
He and Schiller connected immediately. They discovered shared design interests, overlapping university ties (both attended Brown) and a mutual curiosity about each other’s lives. Their meetings unfolded over dinners at Goldman Plaza, where conversations flowed easily. So easily, in fact, that Cunningham joked he ended up interviewing her just as much as she interviewed him.
“It didn’t feel like an age difference,” he said. “We had no problem finding things to talk about.”
Through their conversations, Cunningham learned about Schiller’s upbringing in New Orleans, her professional life, her international travels and her partner’s family abroad. She, in turn, learned about his career, his family, his marriages and the values that mattered most to him. She was especially touched by his deep pride in his daughter and his commitment to remaining curious and social.
Cunningham said he sits at a different table each day in the dining room to meet more people. And even though he is not Jewish, he said he has enjoyed learning about Jewish culture, rituals and customs. “That curiosity doesn’t stop when you move into a senior home,” he said.
For him, the project demonstrated the importance of creating spaces where younger and older generations are intentionally brought together.
“The only thing wrong with Rhoda Goldman,” he joked, “is that there aren’t enough young people here.”
Schiller has continued to visit with Cunningham through JFCS’ Friendly Visitors program. At the gallery event in December, their worlds came together when their family members were introduced.
“My whole family was here,” Cunningham said. “They all got to meet her.”
Cunningham added that he’s eagerly awaiting his framed portrait, which will hang on the wall in a public area — a visible reminder of a connection that began with an interview and became a friendship.