Ruth Johnson Colvin, who founded Literacy Volunteers of America, dies at 107

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — Ruth Johnson Colvin, who based Literacy Volunteers of America, was inducted into the Nationwide Ladies’s Corridor of Fame and obtained the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, has died. She was 107 years outdated.

Colvin died on Sunday in Syracuse, New York, in keeping with ProLiteracy, the nonprofit group created by the merger of Literacy Volunteers and Laubach Literacy in 2002. She served on the group’s board of administrators till her dying.

“We owe not solely ProLiteracy’s existence to Ruth and her founding of Literacy Volunteers of America, however we’re guided by her innate understanding that literacy is a proper,” a web based tribute mentioned. “We’re humbled to have been in a position to study from her for therefore lengthy. Ruth willingly shared her knowledge with ProLiteracy workers, at all times encouraging us to proceed our battle to enhance grownup literacy.”

Colvin, herself an avid reader, launched Literacy Volunteers in 1962 to talk out in opposition to illiteracy and train folks to learn after seeing 1960 census information that confirmed 11,000 illiterate folks have been residing within the Syracuse space the place she lived.

“Within the Nineteen Fifties, America was unaware it had an illiteracy downside. We thought illiteracy was in India, Africa, China. Not in America,″ she advised The Related Press earlier than receiving the Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2006.

From its beginnings in Colvin’s basement, her group expanded throughout the US and into quite a few different international locations, coaching volunteers in easy strategies to show studying. Her work would take her and her husband, Bob Colvin, by means of dozens of nations. The 2 have been married for 73 years when Bob Colvin died in 2014.

Colvin was inducted into the Nationwide Ladies’s Corridor of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1993 and obtained the President’s Nationwide Volunteer Motion Award from President Ronald Reagan in 1987. She additionally wrote a number of books. One in every of them, “My Travels By Life, Love and Literacy,” was a memoir printed in 2020 when Colvin was 103.

“Generally it’s important to step away from safety into belief and religion and right into a perception in your passions,” she wrote.

She saved a whole bunch of letters she obtained through the years from tutors, college students and supporters, the ProLiteracy tribute mentioned.

“These letters,” it mentioned, “represented her life’s work and proved that anybody could make a distinction within the lives of others.”