PHOTOS COURTESY OF ASHLEY KENNY
JEWSINTHED
Ashley Kenny, right, with her grandmother Fran Penskar
Video Letters to Loved Ones
Mail a mini-movie of your cherished moments — easily viewable without a computer or smartphone. ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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hen Ashley Kenny saw how isolated her 92-year-old grandmother Fran was throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, she knew she had to do something to help make quarantining a little bit easier. Fran, who lives at Meer Apartments on the Jewish Community Campus in West Bloomfield, has spent 10 months in a 540-square-foot apartment with little contact with the outside world. She has no cell phone, computer or Wi-Fi, and has food and books delivered outside her apartment door. Like
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many other older adults who are at higher risk for contracting COVID-19, Fran has been sheltering in place since the crisis first hit Michigan in March. For Kenny, who grew up in West Bloomfield and now lives in Washington, D.C., where she works in media and documentary film production, it left little option for her grandmother to experience important milestones in life. Kenny’s 1-year-old son, Jack, had recently started to walk. When she told her grandmother over the phone about this moment, Fran said how much she missed seeing her family. As
an expert in video, these words sparked an idea for Kenny. “I turned that frustration of not being able to send videos to my grandma into finding a solution,” Kenny explains. That day, she found a video program she already had on hand and uploaded eight short videos of her sons laughing. It included moments from their birthdays, first time riding red wagons and walking. Similar to a photobook, but with video instead, Kenny took the completed project and sent it via snail mail to her grandmother. When Fran received the thin, greeting-card-size videobook device, she was overjoyed. “She was so instantly happy,” Kenny recalls. “She just told me how much it meant to her seeing my sons.” Fran ended up watching the video every single day. Kenny, alongside her brother Zach Bloom, who works in startup tech, realized they could scale the idea nationwide to help others like their grandmother navigate the pandemic and enjoy tangible memories that capture life’s most important moments. From there, Heirloom was born. Set to launch Feb. 2, the new business allows people to send custom videobooks to those they love. Users upload videos through a mobile app that Bloom created, which are then transferred onto videobooks with 5-inch HD screens to be mailed out to recipients nationwide. Each videobook is recyclable, reloadable and Receiving an Heirloom videobook through the mail can bring joy to those isolated from loved ones during the pandemic.
rechargeable, and plays automatically upon receipt. A 10-minute videobook costs $49 and comes with free shipping. POSITIVE RESPONSE App development began in July 2020. By November of that year, Kenny and Bloom, who attended Temple Israel as kids, softlaunched the product to gather feedback and test the process. They found people were sending videos of birthday greetings, engagements, weddings and more, with many grandparents even sending videos back to their children and grandchildren. So far, Kenny says, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “People keep sharing how much joy these cards give to their families,” Kenny says. “It’s been amazing to hear how happy people are to see videos of events they couldn’t attend.” Through Heirloom, Kenny and Bloom aim to solve a problem facing many families: increased isolation and social distancing. By using videobooks, they hope to close that gap and keep people connected. Even after the pandemic, they want Heirloom to be a tool people can use to share their memories. “Everyone is supposed to be enjoying life, especially seniors who now feel so disconnected,” Kenny says. “We’d love to get a videobook in the hands of as many isolated seniors as possible, to lift them up and bring them the happiness and connection they deserve.”
