CINCINNATI — People in Millvale call her Miss Theresa. And they know she’s got lots of stories.
Like the community garden she started at church. Or the flooding problems she fought city officials to address in her neighborhood.
Ask her, and she’ll tell you about how she used to drive a semi-truck. Or the three different types of cancer she’s had. Or the way she took care of her mother and grandmother until they died.
Theresa Thomas is a storyteller at heart. Someone who finds a way to laugh, and make you laugh, no matter what she’s talking about. That’s why, a few minutes from her home, she arranged tree stumps in a circle in her community garden.
To tell stories.
But what makes this story different — the one I’m telling you now — is that Thomas isn't the one telling it. For this story, she put her history into the hands of a student at Cincinnati's School for Creative and Performing Arts.
“It was beautiful,” Thomas said.
WATCH: The neighborhood knows her name. Now, the whole city can hear her story.
Skye McDaniel needs a second to prepare.
The 16-year-old drama student slouches down in her chair, bright lights shining into a room students call the black box. Her hand starts doing something strange, and she’s already laughing when she pushes her knees out.
Then, she says something you can often hear coming out of Thomas’ mouth.
“Do you know what I mean?”
After she says it, Skye throws her head forward in laughter. Thomas is sitting next to her and smiles.
“She got my essence,” Thomas said.
Thomas is 66. She was born in Cincinnati. Left, and then came back.
At her home, she shows me family pictures and tells me to follow her down the hall. She wants to show me the four helpings of meatloaf, cabbage and potatoes she made for her neighbor who just got out of the hospital.
She tells me she made enough for his daughters, too. Thomas hopes they might get interested in how she cooked it. That's why she put watermelon radishes inside.
“We’re neighbors, so we have to take care of each other,” Thomas said. “That’s our community work.”
Work that never launched her into political office, but last year caught the attention of a researcher at the University of Cincinnati. Kate Nicole Hoffman was looking for people with compelling stories to tell. People you might call environmental activists, no matter how big or how small the activism.
“We don’t want it to just be you have to go and work at some national park far away — and that’s what it means to care for the environment,” Hoffman said. “You want them to feel like they could do this, too."
It’s why she partnered with students at SCPA to put on a play. A play full of stories from people like Thomas.
"It certainly worked," Hoffman said.
Inside, the student who performed Thomas' story gives her a hug.
“I feel like I found myself within you,” Skye said. “Especially as a Black person here in Cincinnati, not everyone gets to hear our story. And it really spoke to me.”
The class goes through a few warm-up routines while Thomas watches. She doesn't really understand much of it , but she understands the power of story. Especially the ones she heard this class perform in December.
“It brought me to tears,” Thomas said, before gesturing to Skye. “When she looks at people for the rest of her life, she will know there is a story behind them.”
After another hug, Thomas leaves. And outside the school, she needs a minute to rest. She didn’t bring her inhaler, and she’s breathing heavily now. She only stopped her cancer treatment a few months ago.
She leans against the trunk of her car. She smiles.
"Today's been fun."
The theater project will continue this year, Hoffman said, with more performances of different stories planned this fall.
