Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 13, 1995 TAG: 9503140012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
She wore her cap and gown right on schedule.
Now, she's left college for a year or two to learn how to unlock a treasure buried within her. She found the key in a red brick school building in Roanoke and is now unraveling what had been a mystery all her life.
Barbara Murray was a college graduate with two bachelor's degrees, a former employee of Procter & Gamble Co. and the mother of two. Now her quest has led her to the same red brick school building.
Both women want to learn to read.
For years, these bright, articulate women hid the truth from everyone but family and teachers - inventing excuses, developing coping techniques and avoiding situations that might reveal their secret. They hid their embarrassment and shame - excluding even boyfriends and roommates and sorority sisters - through childhood, high school and into their college years.
Murray and McCoy are above average in intelligence. They are also learning disabled and, by definition, functionally illiterate.
During her freshman year in high school, McCoy transferred from a private Christian school to public school and was placed in classes for the learning disabled, which she says were ``basically a joke.''
Active in sports, the trim honey blond-haired woman often told her friends she needed to talk with the coach, who was also the LD teacher, which provided her with an excuse for being in the teacher's classroom without raising suspicions.
``None of my friends in high school knew, not one. I was a good liar,'' she said with a chuckle.
``I always had an excuse why I couldn't read in front of the class,'' she said, ``I'd lost a contact, couldn't find my glasses. ... I could always cover myself.''
But the con game was not without a price. ``The night before a test, I would get sick, throwing up and crying,'' she said. ``I played sports to help me feel better about myself.''
Her memory served her well. With a reading ability on the fourth grade level, McCoy listened attentively in class and retained information as it was given to her. Her mother read to her at night. Because she was in specialized classes, she was not required to write papers or to take written tests.
It was only after graduation, following a summer of work at a youth camp where self-esteem was a big part of the curriculum, that McCoy decided to reveal herself and began telling people: ``I've never read a book. I can't.''
Some thought her courageous; others were amazed she had made it into college.
After spending two years at Liberty University in Lynchburg, then three at East Tennessee State University, she began her search for a program that would unlock the written word for her.
A maze of phones call and contacts led McCoy to The Achievement Center in Roanoke because, as she told Director Barbara Whitwell, ``Everywhere I turned for help I heard your name.''
Ready to focus her life on learning to read, McCoy moved in with her sisters, who live in Forest, so she could benefit from the center's after-school tutoring program.
Four hours a week McCoy is guided by Julie Pizzino, a certified learning-disabilities teacher.
The one-on-one tutoring program for adults and children uses the Orton-Gillingham method to teach reading. Its hallmarks are structured, multisensory, phonetic and sequential techniques.
Is it working?
``In the fall, it took Peggy an hour to read a small list of words,'' Pizzino said. ``Now, she's moving much faster.''
``This is the first program that's really worked for me,'' McCoy said, tears welling up in her eyes. ``I've been to so many stupid programs, it's pathetic.''
McCoy attributes her much of her progress to the individualized program, which homes in on her particular problems and allows her to progress at her own pace.
On her own for the first time, she has become more creative in compensating for her learning difficulties. She's very organized and plans ahead, so ``I'm never caught off-guard.''
For someone who can only read minimally or not at all, that means memorizing landmarks (street signs mean nothing), using clues to help her remember words she needs to write out a check, drawing pictures on grocery lists and memorizing patrons' orders during her part-time waitressing job.
McCoy still has battles to win, within and without, but she has certainly seen victory. In a trip to a bookstore to test her skills, she could read the book titles, not just know the subject matter by color or art work. And it was strange.
``Reading, to you, is nothing,'' she told a reporter. ``It's weird, kind of new and different to me - the way whitewater rafting might feel to you.''
Admittedly, she is not fond of reading - ``I'm 24 years old, and I've never sat down just to read'' - but she makes herself read every day so she can learn, improve and finish college within the next few years.
``I didn't come [here] setting a goal because I didn't want to be disappointed,'' McCoy said, her voice quivering. ``With this, I don't set goals, I just take it as it comes.''
|n n| When Barbara Murray waited for her ride to school, her friends were on the opposite side of the street. While they got on the bus to public school, she was taken to a school for retarded children.
In the ninth grade, her reading skills were so poor she was told she'd never graduate from high school. She graduated from the University of South Carolina with two degrees and a 3.8 average.
Out of college, Murray was chosen over several hundred other applicants for a Procter & Gamble training program, which led to a demanding position with the company.
Determination, hard work, intelligence, coping skills and the many hours her teacher-mother spent with her helped her to be successful in society's terms. But she was a failure in her own eyes. She thought she was dumb because she could not read.
Growing up in an educated family, Murray was constantly reminded of the importance of reading. She wanted to instill that in her children, too. She read often to her first child, Elizabeth, savoring the moments the little girl spent curled up in her lap, too young to realize that Mommy was making up a lot of the words.
When Elizabeth was 31/2 she noticed. The same book was read differently from the day before. Elizabeth pointed it out. Devastated, Murray stopped reading to her daughter.
But she realized the disability she had never really understood was not going to go away.
Throughout school, Murray had learned to compensate for her learning difficulty. She got textbooks for her courses the summer before school began, had them taped or used tapes made for the blind. She taped classes, listened to them every night, borrowed other students' notes, copying them in a way she could decipher. She relied a lot on her memory.
Murray kept her secret until she was a sophomore in college. Her sorority sisters were in awe of what she had accomplished, finally understanding why she spent so many hours studying, why she was so disciplined and why she had made so many excuses in her day-to-day behavior.
``Elizabeth just read her first book to me,'' she announced just a few weeks ago. ``I didn't read my first book until I was in high school.'' Misty-eyed and proud, she emerged with her daughter from the room where they had been reading together. She wanted to buy the book from the school's library, treasuring it.
Murray had a Swiss-cheese education. ``I'm now going back and filling in the holes,'' she said. ``I'm now meeting the words I've used for years.''
Elizabeth, now 61/2 and also learning-disabled, has attended The Achievement Center since September. Murray wanted to be able to help her daughter with her schoolwork, so she decided to learn by the same method. She and Elizabeth sometimes reverse their roles as student and helper.
``I didn't really understand my disability, but I see it now through my daughter,'' Murray said. ``I see how it affects my everyday life. I had anger building up in me for many years because I didn't understand it.''
Murray carries a dictaphone, repeating information into it slowly, information such as what medication the doctor told her over the phone to buy. Afraid she won't remember it accurately and unable to write it down quickly enough, she has found this a reliable method. She also uses a portable computer because she can type faster than she can write. ``But if you looked at my typing, you wouldn't understand it.
``I'm finding out that anyone can learn to read,'' she said, and that a learning disability is just a learning difference. ``The Achievement Center is teaching me by the way I see the picture.
``If I had listened to all those people when I was growing up, I'd probably be a drug addict by the side of the road,'' she said.
It was only six months ago when she could finally say, ``I've proven all of those people wrong. There's nothing wrong with me. We all have handicaps, some are just more visible. But there's hope; that's the beautiful thing.''
by CNB