Ruth Johnson Colvin, founder of Literary Volunteers of America, is dead at 107

Ruth Johnson Colvin, founder of Literary Volunteers of America, is dead at 107

Aug 21 2024

Ruth Johnson Colvin, who founded what became one of the world’s largest organizations of volunteers tutoring basic language skills to functionally illiterate peoples in America and other lands, opening doors to citizenship and better lives, died on Sunday at her home in Syracuse, N.Y. She was 107.

In 1961, Ms. Colvin, a middle-aged, college-educated Syracuse homemaker and mother of two, was appalled to discover that the recent census had counted 11,055 residents of Onondaga County, N.Y., who could not read or write. She had no experience teaching, but felt passionately that she had to do something about it.

A year later, after consulting reading specialists and service agencies, she opened an office in her basement, began recruiting volunteers from churches to be tutors, wrote training manuals, and set up a small group to reach out to residents, many of them immigrants, to teach them basic English, offering pathways to jobs, education and rising standards of living.

It was slow going at first but over the succeeding decades under her guidance, the organization won federal and private grants, created programs in many states, won national recognition and changed its name to Literacy Volunteers of America.

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