As we wind down the week in which RIF turned 43 I have found myself reflecting on some of those wonderful little moments in time over my eight years here that say “Guess what, RIF, you really made a difference for a kid.” I am flooded with faces of people young and old from all across this country who have shared with me what it means or meant to them to get a book, a free book, a book to keep “all for my own self.”
The most recent of these episodes happened in a store in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport. A clerk said she would be more than happy to get the information I was seeking about a product and email me; I handed her my business card and she became very excited…I was glad to see it appeared to be a “happy” excited! She then said “Could this be the same RIF that gave me books at St. Aloysius Center in New York City years ago?” I said well, yes, it is; she said “Is Ms. Beth still the head lady and does she still do RIF there at the Center?” and again, I said yes and told her of the growth at St. Aloysius and how students at Harlem Academy which comes under St. Aloysius for RIF programming had assisted in the launch of a Macy’s campaign for RIF at NASDAQ and then appeared on the plaza during a CBS Early Show. She was even more excited at this point and extolled the benefits of RIF and all that it had meant to her. Other customers were somewhat spellbound during this unsolicited testimonial as was I. She asked “Is RIF in North Carolina” and in addition to saying yes (I was doing lots of answering “yes”), I told her how to look up RIF program sites on the web. My new friend and I said goodbye, and I told her I would check back with her the next time I am in the airport. Despite feeling oh, so tired after a day of “too close for comfort” connections in a couple of airports and crowded planes, I all but skipped to my gate. What a thrill to know after all these years she clearly remembered the excitement of book distribution day and even told me the stories from a couple of those books!
Just think…since 1966 more than 350 million books and a whole lot of people like my new friend in the airport who are excited about reading still. Thank you RIF!
Margaret McNamara Pastor is the daughter of RIF Founder Margaret McNamara and a current member of RIF’s Board of Directors. Today on RIF’s 43rd birthday she shares memories of her mother and RIF.
My mom, Margaret McNamara, loved to read to me, my brother and my sister, and everyone else. By reading to us, my mom transformed us into voracious readers. She worked in the poorer communities in Washington tutoring young people, and she began to notice they were bored and had no motivation to read on their own.
One morning, a simple idea leaped into her brain, and RIF is the child of that idea. If children were going to have fun in the world and become contributing members of society, they needed to enjoy a lifetime of reading. These books should relate to their daily lives, and most importantly, the children needed to have their own books. She believed that if you put books in the hands and the homes of children, this would lead to a life-long love of reading and contribute to a fulfilling life.
Mother had a great love of people, particularly children. She was full of life and energy and felt anything was possible. At base, she believed people were good at heart, and she felt that misfortune and deprivation could be altered. On top of all this, she was persistent to the point of being relentless, particularly on behalf a good cause. RIF is here today because of her determination, and it has grown over 43 years, recruiting thousands of volunteers and millions of RIF kids, because its staff has demonstrated the same striving to improve young people’s lives as she did.
At the beginning, there were few children’s books in paperback. Few books had stories of children of different ethnicities and cultures; few books told the narrative of different families; and there were few publishers or distributors who believed that a free book could make a whole lot of difference in motivating children to read. It was a long slog in the early years. Doors were not easily opened, and a new way of approaching reading motivation was not immediately embraced. But Mother had many crusaders at her side that gave their energy and time to the creation of RIF: Kay Lumley, Barbara Atkinson, Mary Schuman Eddy, Ruth Graves, Lynda Johnson Robb, Jean Sisco, Anne Richardson, Loretta Barrett, Arthur White and so many others.
The “RIF bookmobile” was my mom’s dream brought to life. In 1967, Ford Motor Company donated a white van fitted with bookshelves. This allowed the books to be shared with several schools during the summers. I never was able to see her with the bookmobile, but I thought this was a wonderful photo of her with Barbara Atkinson and a local musician. Children and volunteers joined together to paint the first bookmobile with a V and a child sitting in the middle reading a book. The RIF bookmobile became almost as well known as the ice cream truck. Malcolm Taylor, one of the drivers, was like the Pied Piper. When the children heard the “ooga ooga” of his horn, they’d run behind the truck to the next stop. Initially he did the distributions without much help, and he cared for the children like a father, sometimes dipping into his own resources to provide for special needs. Later, he’d do five locations a day, and volunteers met the van and would read with children and sometimes do arts and crafts as well as other special projects.
Mom loved children. She wanted to open their lives to the world through reading and fun. She was a prankster and loved a good time. She had a great sense of humor and like the seven dwarfs, she loved to whistle while she worked. She filled my early life with stories; every night before bed we would read a Golden Book or children’s classic that she had ordered through the mail. Mom was always full of ideas for plays, building sets and making costumes. We sold tickets for our plays to the neighborhood. On my Halloween birthday she would appear in costume, generally as a witch or ghost, and tell stories with props, including grapes for witch eyes, cold spaghetti for hair and on one occasion she dressed as a Charles Addams character with a live baby alligator on her arm. Mom loved the written word. When away from home I would receive manila envelopes filled with articles, which I “must read” with Mom’s comments in the margins about people, politics, the arts, poverty, children, poetry, and quotes from all manner of people.
When she was not with children and family, she was working as a volunteer for the PTA, the Polio Foundation, the League of Women Voters, the Juvenile Court Advisory Council, and many other national and public service groups when she moved to D. C. This work strengthened her belief that volunteers can be as productive as any business or government professional. Her belief was validated. Thousands of RIF volunteers have become the centerpiece of 18,000 RIF sites in 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories. She would be particularly proud to know that many RIF kids have passed along their love and dedication to RIF to their children and grandchildren. It is an amazing legacy.
In celebration of RIF’s 40th birthday in 2006, when I spoke with Michel Martin on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, many RIF kids now in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s called in to the station to tell their stories and to say they still have their RIF books. Now that is a statement about the power of one woman’s idea that bore fruit and inspired thousands of people to plant new trees of books for millions of children.
From its 1966 founding in the public schools in DC, RIF has expanded to other types of programs in the District of Columbia. One very special expansion was the Spanish Education Development Center (SED). 1980 marked the beginning of our long-standing partnership with the SED which has been under the leadership of Martha Egas as the Executive Director over the 29 years of our partnership.
Recently I had the privilege to visit with Martha at the SED Center’s new location on 3100 Kansas Avenue NW which was once a Hahn Shoe Warehouse. In March 2009 the nonprofit relocated from its two smaller Adam Morgan sites to this 24,00 square foot Petworth address. This colorful, state of the art facility may be brand new, but the core values of the center have remained the same.
The SED Center, which purports to be the first bilingual, multicultural preschool in DC, opened in 1971 with the primary goal of offering quality childcare and empowering Spanish speaking and other immigrant communities by responding to their educational needs through various services and initiatives. In 1978 Martha Egas came to the SED family, and two years later she was asked to coordinate and launch their RIF program.
After our tour of the facility, Martha pored over several gigantic binders showing me the history of the SED Center in pictures. Each photograph serves as a testament to the creativity and commitment of the staff, volunteers, and families that have helped SED grow and thrive. At the Center, RIF distributions were and are never mere opportunities for children to receive books. Held around Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter, the distributions double as holiday celebrations where the children’s favorite stories come to life through plays, puppetry and other exciting activities. Lulu Delacre who penned “Arroz con Leche” is among the many children’s book authors and illustrators who have participated in the distributions.
From 1987 to 1990 and in partnership with RIF and a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, the SED Center sent the love of reading into homes with the Storytelling Family Club which allowed families to host reading sessions in their own apartments and other neighborhood settings. A multi-generational, bilingual program, the Club let parents and other adult family members become storytellers for the evening. This worked well as even those adults who were not proficient readers were able to be valuable contributors to the events. To support this endeavor, professional storytellers were occasionally employed to coach and model storytelling methods.
Martha says it is very rewarding to regularly have her former preschool students, who are now parents themselves, return to read and volunteer at distributions because they remember their own experiences with RIF and want to give back. Martha reflected in closing “the main thing is to provide children with opportunities. The love for books begins here. We get that from educating parents about the importance of reading and education.”
Thank you, Martha, for all your great work with these young children and their families!
Nia McLean Programs Unit 1
A highlight of SED Center's RIF program one year was a special visit with other RIF programs at The White House hosted by First Lady Barbara Bush.
Be sure to visit RIF’s BIRTHDAY MEMORY BOOK and tell us before November 3 about your favorite RIF memory!
TA-DA! Beat the drum, sound the trumpet, twirl the flags!
RIF’s Ambassadors representing all states and territories were asked to take a photo wishing RIF a Happy 43rd birthday! The winners are shared here with you as we approach Tuesday, November 3 which is birthday time! Each winning RIF program received a cash prize to have a birthday party or purchase other RIF-related items as well as each winning site will receive a Multicultural Book Collection.
Congratulations to the winners, thank you for participating in this special celebration!
GRAND PRIZE WINNER
Arctic Light Elementary School
Fort Wainwright, Alaska
Ambassador Donna Morrow
MOST FUN
Two winners in this category!
Richland County School District 1
Columbia, South Carolina
Ambassador Ida Thompson
Boston Public Schools
Harvard Kent School
Boston, Massachusetts
Ambassador Kathleen Sullivan
MOST CREATIVE
Chief Shikellamy Elementary
Sunbury, Pennsylvania
Ambassador Lisa Mertz
HAPPIEST READERS
AKA Sorority Delta Lambda Omega
Shreveport, Louisiana
Ambassador Lueburda Jamison Myers
BEST USE OF BOOKS
RIF of Pensacola
Pensacola, Florida
Ambassador Elaine Site
Congratulations again to the winners and Happy Birthday to RIF!
We continue preparing to celebrate RIF’s 43rd birthday with RIF memories being placed in the virtual memory book. To win a children’s book autographed by the author or illustrator during days leading to the birthday on November 3, place a memory in the comments section of the original posting, this posting today or on one of the special Memory Monday postings, a Flashback Fridays post or even a comment when you see a blog posting on RIF’s Facebook fan page.
Congratulations to these latest winners!
Oct. 15: Jen Robinson: Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Oct. 16: Terry Doherty: Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
Oct. 17: Michelle Powers: Maisy Big, Maisy Small by Lucy Cousins
Oct. 18: Esme Codell: Wolves, by Emily Gravett
Oct. 19: Rachael Walker: Free Fall by David Wiesner
Oct. 20: Carolyn Gardner: The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney
In the midst of the cotton fields and the silos in rural Mumford, Texas, Clifford the big red dog comes to the only school in this unincorporated community to spark up of the lives of the children. According to Pete Bienski, the superintendent of Mumford ISD,“the children are always excited to receive a book, but 30 years ago, it was less common.”He states that you have to picture the impoverishment of this rural community 30 years ago to truly understand his experience with the program.There was little funding and limited opportunities to motivate the children in the community to read.However, with Mr. Bienski’s dedication and commitment to serve the children, he started a RIF program with only 70 migrant students ranging from grades pre-k through eighth grades and opened doorways to make reading more accessible and enjoyable.
Today, Mumford ISD has 550 students ranging from grades pre-k through twelfth and was named a Blue Ribbon School of 2009 by the U. S. Department of Education! After 30 years, Mr. Bienski still stands behind RIF as “the best government program out there.”RIF has given Mumford ISD the opportunity to assist the children to find the magic in reading.Furthermore, Mr. Bienski states that the most noticeable difference with book ownership is the increase in the children’s interest in the school library. The children feel empowered and want to read more.He says there is no better way to spend money than to buy books to give to children who might not otherwise have that ownership opportunity.
In appreciation for Bienki’s hard work, dedication and the difference he makes in his student’s lives, RIF is proud to feature Mumford ISD as a Flashback Friday!
Happy reading!
Carol
Be sure to visit RIF’s BIRTHDAY MEMORY BOOK and tell us about your favorite RIF memory!
We continue preparing to celebrate RIF’s 43rd birthday with RIF and reading memories being placed in the virtual memory book. To win an autographed children’s book during the month of October, place a memory on the original posting, this posting today or on one of the special Memory Monday postings, a Flashback Fridays post or even a comment when you see a blog posting on RIF’s Facebook fan page.
Congratulations to the following winners:
October 9: Margo Jantzi will receive Duck Soup by Jackie Urbanovic
October 10: Krista Maxwell will receive Chicken Bedtime Is Really Early by Erica S. Perl
October 11: Kay Winters will receive Maisy Big, Maisy Small by Lucy Cousins
October 12: Susan at Color Online will receive Testing the Ice by Sharon Robinson, illustrated by Kadir Nelson
October 13: Anne Berger will receive Little Oh by Laura Krauss Melmed
October 14: Shaunita Felder will receive Ellington Was Not A Street by Ntozake Shange, illustrated by Kadir Nelson
Have you entered a RIF memory? A special memory about reading?
Anne Hazard Richardson was a founding member of RIF and served as Chairman of RIF’s Board of Directors from 1981 to 1996.
Since 2002, her daughter Nancy Richardson Carlson has directed a district-wide mentoring program in Vermont that supports middle school youth to achieve their potential through close personal and supportive relationships with caring adults.
Nancy Richardson Carlson
Nancy recalls:
I was only twelve years old when our mom started volunteering in Washington during the first years of RIF. She would help plan the book distributions, organize teams of volunteers, ask people for donations. She did everything. And she loved it! For 15 years she chaired RIF’s board. I remember her saying how lucky she felt that the perfect cause had found her. Our father understood the meaning and reward that she derived from her connection with amazing RIF volunteers around the country. He wrote, “I am not aware of any other voluntary organization that, in proportion to its size, does more for the future of our children and country.”
When our mother retired from her role as Chair of the RIF Board, my two sons and my brother Henry’s daughter spoke from a podium they could not see over to thank their grandmother for all she’d done to inspire in them a love of reading. In looking through files at home in hopes of finding a record of their words that day, I found instead a journal entry my younger son had written at age 10, a couple of months after his grandmother had died, about his earliest memory. From hearing the rest of us reminisce about his Gammy, he had realized that he had not had the chance to know her fully before she had become sick at the end of her life. In his journal, he described sitting in his grandmother’s lap in the loft of the Richardson’s home in Eastham, Massachusetts while she read aloud to him. He wrote about the “bright, dazzling light…filtering in through the windows’” and went on to say:
I’ve never really known Gammy as her entire and complete person, but I have been able to piece together a perception of her, using memories just like this one. She has always struck me as a woman who feels the need to spread her light, to fill in every dark recess with all the goodness within her – which justifies her leadership of organizations such as RIF (Reading Is Fundamental), and for that matter her desire to assist anyone in need. Indeed, her personality seems to be very similar to the light that was brightening the room we were reading in.
I have in a frame on my desk at home a quote from my mother that summarizes her commitment to improving the lives of children: What we do may be as small as helping a child learn to read, or as big as founding a large organization that will serve children for years to come. But there is no greater satisfaction than freely giving our time and talents to make life better for someone else.
Her passion for RIF and its mission inspired hundreds of people that she met over the years. She also instilled in us a deep appreciation for the work of volunteers and what they can accomplish. It is no accident that my own work involves building a community of over one hundred volunteer mentors.
-Nancy Richardson Carlson
Anne Richardson with D.C. RIF kids at John Adams Elementary School in 1986.
The Anne Richardson RIF Volunteer of the Year Award was founded in 1998 by a gift from her husband, the late U.S. Attorney General and Ambassador Elliot L. Richardson. Many friends of the Richardsons have since generously contributed to the endowment to honor Anne Richardson’s lifetime of volunteer service and salute the hundreds of thousands of RIF volunteers who inspire children to become lifelong readers.
MEMORY MONDAY is a month-long feature in anticipation of RIF’s 43rd birthday on November 3. Each Monday until that birthday Rasco from RIF will feature RIF memories from someone affiliated with RIF from the very earliest days.
Within three years of its founding in 1966, RIF had spread its book distribution program to include 60 sites in Washington, DC and 10 additional cities. As we prepare for RIF’s 43rd birthday, let’s take a look each Friday prior to the celebration on November 3 at a RIF program that has been in operation for a long period of time.
One of the early sites not in an urban setting was Roane County, Tennessee, an area in rural Appalachia. In 2009, almost thirty years after the program began, we drop by and learn RIF is still going strong, even stronger in the dedication of the volunteers’ commitment to spreading the joy of reading and encouraging children and young people to become life-long readers! RIF of Roane County serves 3500 children in 12 public schools found in Rockwood, Kingston, Oliver Springs and Harriman. In recent years the program has given children the experience of trips to an aquarium, family reading nights, poetry night and a “Give Your Favorite Book An Award” event. In the past year alone, 68 parents and 41 community volunteers participated.
Thirty years and going strong; congratulations to this early RIF program!
Happy reading!
Carol
Be sure to visit RIF’s BIRTHDAY MEMORY BOOK and tell us about your favorite RIF memory!
