Midge (in red, left) with friends and neighbors including Brianne DeLain ’23, Kayla Howard ’23, Lily Frisch ’23 and Kelly Massick ’23

Neighborliness Bonds SNC Room-Mates With Super Senior Midge

Four college students and their new friend Midge were just enjoying getting to know one another while helping one another out as good neighbors do. Then the television cameras showed up.

Their cross-generational connection was to gladden many more hearts when WBAY’s Action 2 News drew on the unique friendship to launch their “Countdown to Christmas” series of stories symbolizing the season of giving.

It all began when SNC seniors Kayla Howard, Lily Frisch, Brianne DeLain and Kelly Massick moved into their campus house last summer. Just afterward, their new neighbor – at 95 years old, a senior of another kind – lost her husband. She herself was struggling to get around as an old hip problem made itself known once more.

“Not to worry though,” said WBAY in the December news segment, “Midge’s new neighbors have her back.”

While the friends decorated cookies together, Midge told the cameras how the young women were doing all kinds of things to help her out. Frisch, for instance was going to take her to the hairdresser the next day. “From the beauty shop to the grocery store to doing yardwork and getting her mail, Lily, Brianne, Kelly and Kayla are there,” reported WBAY.

Frisch has become the connector, texting back and forth with the 95-year-old. “I communicate with everyone and Midge about what’s going on, who needs help with what, times and everything,” she explains.

Howard says, “[Midge] would always ask, ‘Oh, can you bring us to my appointment’ or something and we’re, ‘Of course we can.’ We really bonded on those trips there and back.”

It’s a friendship with joy on all sides: DeLain says: “She is the best storyteller. I just cannot believe the things she tells me. Sometimes they’re unbelievable, but yet so cool.”

“I feel like we have very similar humor,” says Frisch. “I can just relate to that, and we are always here just laughing. It could just be about something really pointless, but I just think it is so funny.”

Frisch’s own family are also in the loop. Midge told the TV crew, “Lily’s grandmother sent me soup from Madison, and I don’t know her, isn’t that great? And the soup was delicious.

“I didn’t plan [this], I didn’t ask for it, I don’t know how I got here. I just am 95. It’s old.”

After 21 years in her current home, WBAY reported, Midge has seen a lot of college students come and go over the years. This year, she feels as if she won the lottery.

Jan. 18, 2023