Her neighborhood was diverse, filled with both black and white. Dunne's best friend in first grade was a black girl named Amie Austin. At 75 years old, she still remembers the songs they sang.
Jane Fillmore is about to turn 82. She raised her family in Custer, S.D. - a place where blacks were virtually nonexistent.
Willow Wells and Keisy Richard - two 13-year-olds from Florence Middle School - leaned in close to hear every word.
On Monday, as the country celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. and his desire to forge common ground between people of all walks of life, a room filled with seniors and eighth-graders shared lunch and learned they weren't so different after all.
The Words' Family Resource Center program and Montana Literacy Support Corps hosted the gathering at Florence Carlton Community Church, with help from the Florence Branch of Farmers State Bank, Florence-Carlton Middle School, Ravalli County Council on Aging, the FCCC Friendship Club, Majestic Bus Co., and Florence Carlton Community Church.
At tables scattered around the community room, close to 50 people both young and old told stories about their lives and shared their views of the world.
“I am worried about the future,” Wells told the ladies at her table. “With global warming and the war, I don't really want to see what's going to happen next.”
“It's kind of scary right now,” agreed her friend, Richard.
To that, Fillmore offered her own insight.
“I don't really worry about tomorrow or the next day any more,” Fillmore said. “I live for today. And I don't try to live in the past either. That's all gone. All I do is try to remember the best parts.”
As the hour progressed, they learned from each other.
What would you do if your computer wasn't available for a day? one of the ladies asked.
“I would probably listen to music,” Wells replied. “You know music has a major influence on teenagers.”
And so it did in Dunne's family, too.
“We'd get done with school and we'd get our musical instruments out,” Dunne remembered. “That's how we had fun. And on Saturday night, when the bus would come in, my dad would go down and get a new jigsaw puzzle.”
OK, so maybe things have changed a bit in this day of computers and other electronic gizmos.
That doesn't mean that those over 70 have been totally left behind.
Dunne and Fillmore said they both know their way around a computer keyboard.
“We have two computers,” said Fillmore. “I know how to turn them on. I know how to turn them off. And I know how to get to my games. I've got a new one. I could spend four hours a day on it if I let myself.”
That notion came as a surprise for Wells, who let the entire room in on Fillmore's secret.
“I thought it was only people our age that could spend that much time on a computer,” she said over a microphone.
And the stories went on and on.
Dunne told about going to movies on Wednesday night where 10 cents bought you admission and the theater threw in a dinner plate. The movies were scare-fests and whenever something frightening occurred, someone would always break a plate to punctuate the moment.
Back in Fillmore's school days, uniforms were required.
“It was because the rich kids would get all dressed up and the poor kids couldn't afford it,” she said.
By the end of the lunch hour, everyone seemed to have a different idea of just what young and old means.
One by one, some of the seniors stepped up to the microphone and said they'd learned that these young people weren't all that much different from how they were at the same age.
“So often we hear that kids are no good these days,” said one. “We hear they're always in trouble, but I don't think that's true after today. I heard they baby-sit, they cook and they go to school.”
“They do all these things that they just don't get credit for,” she said. “I'm happy I was able to come here today to see that for myself.”
Another reminded her new young friends - “You just need to remember that just because we're old fogies doesn't mean we're getting ready to lie down and die. We can still be fun.”
Florence eighth-grade English teacher Taryn Pettit said her mother had a hard time with the idea that she'd actually turned 80.
“She told me that she still felt like she was 30 and that number just didn't make any sense to her,” Pettit said.
Pettit sat in and listened to the discussions. She heard her students talk about their fears for the future and listened as seniors talked about the worries they had growing up with the atomic bomb and even the uncertainty of space travel when the Russian Sputnik was launched.
“I think we all share the same experiences,” she said. “They're all just slightly different because of time.”
And as the luncheon came to an end, Fillmore looked one more time over at her new teenage friend.
“I'm favorably impressed with you,” she said leaning over and giving Richard a hug.
Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at pbackus@missoulian.com.
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