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SUCCESS STORY

Stigma delays help
Woman endures years of shame before she learns to read
  

Sidebars:

* teaching basic skills

* second language classes

* two immigrants' stories

* literacy by race

* document literacy

series index

By Tom Beyerlein Dayton Daily News
Published: Tuesday, May 5, 1998
Part 3 of 5

Dottie Jones can laugh about it now.

She had gone to the grocery store and, as usual, picked out her canned goods by looking at the pictures on the labels. She bought a big cannister bearing a picture of a drumstick.

"We're having fried chicken for dinner!" she told her children.

Then Jones opened the container and looked in at a tubful of Crisco.

"There wasn't any chicken in there," she said. "It was lard."

Jones, 52, is now an avid reader who owns a small business, Dottie's Alterations Unlimited, in downtown. But until she was in her early 40s, she put up with endless daily annoyances, disappointments and humiliations because she was too ashamed to seek help for her illiteracy. Local literacy officials believe a lot of people never seek help for literacy problems, or at least delay their education for years, because of the social stigma of illiteracy.

"Literacy has such a heavy connotation," said Susan Bodary of Project READ, the local literacy umbrella group. "People equate illiteracy with being dumb. People who can read some think they don't need literacy training." And so, until they come to grips with their shame, they continue to hide their problems and fumble in the dark.

"It was really horrible, having this secret that nobody else knew," Jones said.

She went to great lengths to cover up her illiteracy. For example, she used to carry two pairs of eyeglasses in her purse - a normal pair and a pair with shattered lenses.


'I didn't want to tell anybody, because people tend to be cruel. When you can't read, you're embarrassed, you're ashamed.'

DOTTIE JONES


"If somebody asked me to read something, I'd pull out the broken ones and say, `Oh, darn. I just broke my glasses this morning,' and somebody else would read it for me."

Jones grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., one of four daughters of alcoholic parents who are now deceased. Her mother abandoned the family when she was young, she said, and her father dished out physical abuse.

She went to school in Wilkes-Barre, but didn't learn to read and didn't feel like her teachers did much to help her. Since she couldn't read, she turned her attention to subjects such as industrial arts and auto mechanics, then almost exclusively the domains of boys. She said she was eventually expelled.

She moved to Dayton with her new husband at 21 in 1967. They had four children. She kept the secret of her illiteracy from her husband and children for years.

"I didn't want to tell anybody, because people tend to be cruel," she said. "When you can't read, you're embarrassed, you're ashamed. People look at you like you're ignorant. They talk down to you. I stayed away from people because I was just terrified."

Illiteracy also meant day-to-day hassles.

"I couldn't give my children medication when they were sick - I was afraid I'd give them an overdose," Jones said. "I took the bus - I got lost a lot of times too ashamed to ask anybody (which bus to take). Lost in the cold, rain, sleet - I've done it."

The turning point for Jones came about 10 years ago when her youngest child was in first grade. He asked her to read a book to him and she made up a story based on the book's pictures. She didn't know her son was to give a report on the book to his class. He recited her made-up story and got an F.

"He said, `I hate you, I hate you. You told me that story and I got a bad grade.' I ran upstairs and locked myself in my room. That was it. I had to do something."

After seeing a TV advertisement, she called the Miami Valley Literacy Council and started meeting with a reading tutor.

"I learned how to read within a year and a half," she said. "It could have been faster, but I was going through a divorce at the time. I was missing the sound of the letters. As soon as I got that (phonics) skill, I learned to read very quickly.

"I did it in such a short time, I wish I had done it much sooner. I fell asleep with my books, I was just so wound up. I just couldn't put a book down - everything I'd see, I'd read it."

Jones became a counselor for the literacy council, and sometimes tells her success story for civic, school and church groups on behalf of the council.

She took a high school equivalency test three years ago and missed passing it by two points. She plans to take the test again.

Literacy has brought Jones out of her self-imposed isolation. "Before, I was shy. If I'd talk, I'd mumble. Now people say I talk too much," she said with a laugh.

Jones was "working in a convalescent home, scrubbing toilets" four years ago when she decided to start her own business.

When she couldn't read, she focused on working with her hands and developed sewing skills. She started doing alterations for people, and it grew into a full-time business, now in the Centre City Building.

"You see that sign on the door - it says Dottie's Alterations Unlimited," she said with pride. "You see? God is good."

Part 3 sidebars:

* teaching basic skills
* second language classes
* two immigrants' stories
* literacy by race
* document literacy
Back to Part 2
Go to Part 4

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