VALPARAISO | "He's wonderful, he's just wonderful. And he's very clean."

Emilie Krysinski, 64, recalled her grandmother's long-ago assessment of her future husband after the first date.

"You're leaving out one thing," said Frank Krysinski, Emilie's wonderful, clean man. "She also said I had a nice butt. That's the truth."

"That is the truth," Emilie said with a smile.

The couple sat side by side in tall, straight-backed chairs in front of a fireplace at Pines Village retirement apartments. A video camcorder and three sets of lights on tripods stood around them. To one side of the camera, Chesterton High School junior Rachel Crawford and Valparaiso High School junior Lisa Gabbard asked the couple questions about life and love.

The intergenerational interaction last week was part of Discovering Our National Treasures, a Pines Village 25th anniversary project aimed at sharing the stories and wisdom of seniors with the wider community.

The project gives Crawford, Gabbard and other health careers students at the Porter County Career and Technical Center the opportunity to learn about the senior citizens they will soon be working with.

For video production students at the career center -- such as Morgan Township High School junior Kelsey Dougherty and Boone Grove High School junior Erin Maynard, who filmed the Krysinski interview -- the project affords a chance to use their new skills in a community effort.

The students will edit their footage and produce a video for Pines Village to use during anniversary celebrations later this spring.

But the end product is not the point of the partnership, said Vicky Gadd, director of Meridian Woods, a Pines Village campus. It's about getting the generations together and getting younger people to see the value of seniors and their stores of knowledge.

The effort will be a success, Gadd said, "if we can get just one student to talk and realize, 'This older person is cool.'"

Emilie Krysinski said she was OK with seniors being seen as national treasures.

"We're all vibrant and active, and we're happy," she said. "We're part of the larger community. Just because we're old doesn't mean we don't like to do things."

That's certainly true of George Iemmolo, 76, who told students in another room of his first car, favorite movies and growing up in New York City.

"We would have rumbles -- altercations in the park," Iemmolo said. "In those days it was all hand to hand, nothing too serious."

Asked about things he still wants to do, the Navy veteran said he's always wanted to jump out of a plane.

"I still may do it," he said.