A little girl named Caroline doesn’t get to pick out a new outfit for her first day of kindergarten — it’s already been determined for her. This 4-year-old wasn’t upset about this, though — in fact, she was excited.
Caroline was wearing a dress that has been in her family since the 1950’s. It has been worn on the first day of school for generations.
Jenny Hirt, Caroline’s mom, didn’t really think much of the dress because it’s been around the family for so long. As with so many things, she almost took it for granted.
“At the time it wasn’t that big of a deal,” Hirt, who lives in Durango, Colorado, told TODAY. “I was like ‘Oh yeah, whatever, it’s a dress of my mom’s.'”
The Hirt family has been passing this handmade dress down for years. It was originally made by Hirt’s grandmother and great-grandmother for her aunt, Martha Esch. Martha wore it to kindergarten in 1950 in Saline, Michigan.
The dress has been worn by almost twenty women. Jenny Hirt wore the dress in 1981.
Even though the dress has been worn by so many people, it’s still in fantastic shape. When Hirt first took it in this year, all that was needed were a few patches and the sleeve needed to be re-attached; nothing she couldn’t easily fix.
“I remember wearing the dress. I was worried it was going to be really old, and I was worried she was going to make it dirty,” Hirt said. “It’s really cool to see her carrying on this tradition. There’s not a lot of stuff in our family that has lasted through all of the generations. So to see her in it, keeping up with something that’s handmade, it means a lot to us.”
The person who is especially touched by Caroline’s most recent wear of the dress is Hirt’s mom, Katy Pearce. It was her mother who helped make the dress. In fact, Pearce flew out to Colorado from South Carolina just to see her granddaughter wear it.
After Caroline wore the dress, it was immediately sent to her cousin Sylvie in Oregon to become the 19th girl in the family to wear the family keepsake.
Something so simple as a handmade dress can create something so sentimental that can be passed down for generations to come. After all the praise and recognition her story has received, the dress is sure never to be taken for granted by Hirt again.
Hirt’s full interview and more on the sentimental dress below.
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