Out of the Shadows, Overcoming Illiteracy

Feb. 26, 2008 — -- Roger Vredenburg, a one-time maintenance worker, remembers the day he was forced to confront his illiteracy.

"Well, it was real difficult because I lost a job that I had been working for a long time," he said. "They come and they found out I couldn't read so they told me I had to go back to my old job and that was really a heartbreaking experience, I mean it was a real traumatic experience."

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Vredenburg realized he needed help, but sharing his secret was gut wrenching.

"It's like [an] alcoholic, smoking, anything like that," he said. "Anything you've got to face up to admit you're doing to make changes. It was a difficult thing to do."

"The most difficult part about that whole thing was humiliating myself now to the point where I could call" a literacy program. "I mean I had their number for a week before I gave them a call and I debated and debated — and in fact when I went up there for the first interview, I walked down the hallway almost to the door, and turned around and walked back to the elevator, and then I said well, I gone this far so I might just well go in and see what they can do."

The Plainfield, Mich., resident's experience is hardly unique. In nearby Grand Rapids, a city of 184,000, one out of every five residents has difficulty reading or cannot read at all.

"If people cannot read in our community, how can our community be viable and survive?" said Susan Ledy, executive director of the Literacy Center of West Michigan. "We have to help each other make sure we are 100 percent literate."

"It's really the root cause of many issues," she added. "And if we can solve the problem at the root cause level, think of all the changes that we'll make in terms of crime, economics, poverty. It really is so intertwined with all of those issues."

So the city, using federal grants and local donations, made a pledge to cut illiteracy in half in 10 years. Today, an intensive reading program is under way, with tutors and adult learners meeting one on one at libraries, churches and schools.