[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1321-1322]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   MARY LEAHY'S CAREER AS AN EDUCATOR

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I have the privilege of being a lifelong 
Vermonter, as were my parents and my brother and sister. All Vermonters 
realize that in a small State like ours, it takes the dedication and 
hard work of very special and talented people to make our State great.
  I will take a moment as a proud brother to mention one such person, 
my younger sister, Mary Leahy. Mary's work with adult basic education 
and teaching and her ability to give adults who have not had the 
capability to read a newfound ability is profound. It is impossible to 
calculate the number of lives she has dramatically improved in our 
State through her work. I still carry the memory of watching a 
grandfather with tears in his eyes, as he read a simple child's book to 
his grandchild. He then told me that he had never been able to read to 
his child, the grandchild's parent, but at least in his later years he 
could read to the grandchild. I thought what a gift. I thought again of 
Mary as I read an article printed in a number of our media in Vermont, 
written by Nancy Graff, about this part of Mary's career. I ask 
unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   [From VTDigger.org, Dec. 28, 2014]

      In This State: For Mary Leahy, Literacy Goes Beyond Reading

                            (By Nancy Graff)

       Several miles up a dirt road in Marshfield, Mary Leahy's 
     driveway swings up a modest rise on the right. In the wake of 
     a recent snowstorm, ice, clumps of snow, ruts, and shattered 
     branches have created endless road stubble. Traffic is 
     infrequent. Leahy hasn't seen Camel's Hump, a breathtaking 
     view normally framed by her house's large west-facing 
     windows, for almost a week due to stubborn low-hanging 
     clouds. No other structure or human being intrudes.
       In this isolated spot, Leahy has spent 20 years thinking 
     through what it means to be literate. She believes it all 
     comes down to creating communities that welcome everyone.
       Two years ago Leahy, a Montpelier native, retired from 
     Central Vermont Adult Basic Education after 34 years as co-
     director and four years before that as a field tutor. 
     Throughout her tenure, she says in her soft voice, she worked 
     to make adult literacy programs ``as inclusive as any other 
     form of education, so that everyone could become part of the 
     cultural community.''
       Leahy is sitting in her living room, her telltale shock of 
     white hair the same color as the walls inside and the snow 
     piled outside. She can tell hundreds of stories about people 
     she has encountered over the past decades. One woman holds a 
     special place in the evolution of her thinking. According to 
     Leahy, when this woman came to be tutored in reading, Leahy 
     asked her why she felt the need to learn now, long after she 
     had left school. She replied that she had a big maple tree in 
     her front yard, and a dream that one day when she finished 
     her chores, she would take a book and sit under that tree and 
     read it.
       ``That became the beacon for the rest of my work,'' Leahy 
     says.
       One book in particular provided more inspiration. A middle-
     aged man under Mary's

[[Page 1322]]

     tutelage asked if they could read ``Black Beauty'' together. 
     ``'Why that book?''' she remembers asking. He had shown no 
     interest in horses. He explained that ``Black Beauty'' had 
     been popular when he was in school, but he could never join 
     in the discussions about it because he couldn't read. He 
     wanted to know how it ends.
       ``I think `Black Beauty' was the most formative book I read 
     as a child. It taught me about being compassionate. I read it 
     over and over and over,'' she says.
       And then there was a favorite nun at Leahy's college, St. 
     Catherine University, in Minneapolis. She taught Leahy that 
     ``work has to serve the world.''
       After graduating and returning to Vermont, Leahy briefly 
     tried her hand at farming before she started working in 
     literacy.
       ``Literacy took up my imagination,'' Leahy says. ``It took 
     up my heart, and I could see the changes in people's lives.''
       Among the mementos from her father's shop that Mary Leahy 
     keeps in her house is the letterpress type that once printed 
     the ``ICE'' cards that people would put in their front 
     windows when they wanted the iceman to make a delivery. 
     Beautifully rendered in wood to begin with, the letter faces 
     are as smooth as glass after decades of use. Beside them is a 
     well-used brass can that contained solvent to clean the type.
       Soon, however, she began to see that being able to identify 
     a letter, being able to associate that letter with a sound, 
     stringing letters into words, and understanding the meaning 
     of the words were not enough. She recalls men at a local 
     electric company who were afraid to requisition a part to fix 
     a machine they could run with their eyes closed because they 
     were unable to fill out the form needed to get the part. They 
     learned the fundamentals of reading for their jobs, but until 
     they could engage with ideas they remained outliers in the 
     world's cultural community.
       ``They needed to be included,'' Leahy says. And that meant 
     being able to help their children with schoolwork, being able 
     to articulate their ideas and opinions, being able to teach 
     themselves to learn.
       Bringing the newly literate into the life of their families 
     and home communities, into the community of ideas that 
     explore our humanity and world, became Leahy's goal.
       These days CVABE serves approximately 600 clients, down 
     from a high of 800 a few years ago. Leahy is quick to praise 
     the people with whom she has worked over the years and other 
     organizations that have made literacy work possible, 
     especially the Vermont Council on the Humanities, with its 
     emphasis on teaching reading not just as a vital skill but as 
     a revelation of the human condition.
       Each student presents unique challenges. Some are well-
     educated immigrants who need to learn English to work in 
     their field. Some have learning disabilities that weren't 
     addressed. Others have lived in such chaotic situations that 
     school wasn't a priority. Still others have come from such 
     poverty that illiteracy was a legacy passed from generations.
       When she began working for CVABE, the organization stressed 
     one-on-one in-home tutoring. ABE itself was a feature of the 
     war on poverty that was an extension of the Department of 
     Education. Leahy's job was to develop tutoring programs by 
     recruiting students and volunteers. To find students, she 
     went door to door asking if anyone needed literacy 
     assistance.
       Being illiterate is not something people want to admit, she 
     says. ``There's a chronic fear of being found out that you 
     can't do what everyone else can. You think you're alone in 
     not being able to do this.''
       And so she met them wherever they felt comfortable. She 
     tutored in homes, in restaurants, in libraries, sometimes in 
     her car.
       Eventually, the Department of Education pushed the ABE 
     program to move toward a more center-based structure. So 
     Leahy oversaw that change, as well as many others, including 
     gaining independence, forming a board, fundraising, starting 
     an alternative high school program for teens, and very 
     important, from her perspective, hosting reading and 
     discussion programs. In 1989 she helped organize the first 
     statewide conference for Vermont's newly literate, ABE 
     students who had once believed their opinions did not matter.
       Leahy learned early in life what it means to be part of a 
     community. Her father, a printer, had a shop near the 
     Statehouse, and like her brothers (one of whom is Vermont's 
     U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy), she regularly delivered printing 
     jobs to the capitol. In the process she learned about 
     government and politics and the obligations of citizenship. 
     She learned about history and immigrant communities through 
     their Irish and Italian ancestors, including one grandmother 
     who was illiterate. These interests have carried over into 
     her current volunteer work for the Friends of the Vermont 
     State House, the Vermont Historical Society, and the 
     Marshfield Historical Society. She wants everyone to have 
     full access to communities like these that will enrich their 
     lives.
       According to Leahy, her students were a joy to teach 
     because they were so motivated. With her eyes tearing up she 
     tells the story of a man who wrote a letter to his first 
     grandchild. ``Things are going to be different than they were 
     for me and your mother,'' he wrote. ``Your mother would bring 
     papers home from school, and I'd keep my distance because I 
     didn't want her to know. But things will be different with 
     you and me.'' That change in one family's quality of life, 
     says Leahy, will resonate for generations. Another student 
     was 93 when he learned to read. He had vowed to learn to read 
     before he died.
       These Vermonters and all the others whose lives Leahy has 
     touched in her life's work are no longer outliers.
       ``We all belong to a very special group of people,'' she 
     says. ``We can read and write.''

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