Never too old to succeed

Dream of learning to read realized after 40 years of patience and persistence

By Deb Stone
The Portland Upside
March 2010

Photo by Robert Holcomb

Marcy Kamis (right) was one of the 30 million American adults who can’t read, but because of her courage and belief in herself, she found a teacher in Merry Gilbertson (left) and is now a successful reader.

Merry Gilbertson attended the first grade near Milan, Minnesota, in 1956. Being successful in school was so important to her family that she never questioned it. Of course, she got good grades. Of course, she would go to St. Olaf College. That’s what people in her family did. And first, she would learn to read.

Everyone learns to read, right? Wrong. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 2003, 14% of Americans over the age of sixteen—30 million adults—could not perform tasks that
required simple reading.

The year Merry started first grade, Marcella “Marcy” Kamis was born in Roswell, New Mexico. She was the firstborn daughter of a Caucasian woman and a Navajo man. Her father, an Air Force pilot, was so proud of his daughter he called her his little Belladonna (beautiful lady).

But once she turned two, Marcy would not hear the endearment again. Her mother took her to live with a new stepfather, where Marcy doesn’t remember them ever calling her by name. They called her Stupid or Idiot or a string of expletives. The family moved often to avoid eviction. Each year another child was born. Each year, school became a greater burden.

“When a teacher knows you can’t read and they continue to call on you, it’s humiliating.” Marcy said.

Still, she tried to do what was expected. She went to school, came home, and helped with chores.

By 1972, Merry Gilbertson was attending St. Olaf College where she shared a room in an old Tudor building with leaded glass windows and large open beams. That same year, Marcy’s family moved to a three-room shack near Canby, Oregon, where the 11 children slept body-to-body across piles of clothes. At Canby High School, Marcy failed all of her ninth grade classes except sewing and choir. She didn’t need to read to pass those.

When the school called about Marcy’s inability to read, her mother pulled her from school and sent her to work in the fields where she weeded hops by hand, and trained them on upright supports. When hops season ended, strawberry season began. After that she picked raspberries, cucumbers and green beans. She worked in the field all day, gave the cash to her mother each afternoon and went about her chores.

In 1977, Merry finished her Master’s Degree in Special Education. Marcy had two sons by then, and struggled to make ends meet. When she turned 21, a Woodburn bar owner offered her a job. Marcy couldn’t read the Oregon Liquor Control Commission test, so the owner took the test for her. Marcy worked days at the cannery, nights at the bar. She put in many hours and left her young sons with her mother for days. Conditions were not good. Welfare workers intervened.

Marcy was afraid she would lose her sons forever. When her boss suggested Marcy give her temporary custody of her oldest son Robert, Marcy signed the papers. She drove her youngest son Teddy to an aunt’s home in Arizona. When Marcy called to visit with Robert, her boss explained that Robert was no longer Marcy’s son. The papers she signed had granted an adoption.

Marcy struggled along for a few years. Her younger sister gave away several children of her own. When the sister became pregnant again, Marcy asked what she intended to do with the baby. Three months later, Marcy’s sister placed baby Jessica in Marcy’s arms. This time, Marcy paid for the adoption attorney herself, so she would know what the papers said.

Jessica was a precocious child. When she read her first grade primers aloud, Marcy followed along. By second grade, Jessica could read better than her mom could. Marcy enrolled her in piano and dance lessons. At six, she attended Starstruck Studio owned by Bill and Rose Holden.

“Times were tough,” Rose said. “But Marcy would do whatever it took to make sure Jessica had music and dance.”

Rose offered Marcy a job at the Oregon City Golf Course. Marcy could frame walls, hang sheetrock, repair plumbing, and lay tile. She could take orders and manage events. She had an uncanny knack to anticipate Rose’s needs.

“If I said, ‘gee, I’d like to…’ she had it done,” Rose remembers.

But Marcy’s lack of tact sometimes rubbed others the wrong way. Rose thought it had to do with Marcy’s inability to read. She paid for Marcy to attend Sylvan Learning Center. Still, Marcy did not learn to read. Reluctantly, Rose let Marcy go.

By then, Jessica was a member of the Oregon City High School dance team coached by Gail Hoskins.

“I never met anyone,” says Gail, “who worked harder than Marcy.”

Even though she worked two or three jobs, Marcy was the first to help at fundraisers. She never took a handout.

“I felt lucky,” Gail says, “to see the vulnerable side of Marcy. There is so much more to her than her tough exterior.”

Gail helped Marcy apply to be a substitute custodian for the Oregon City School District, where she eventually worked full time. She didn’t earn enough to pay Jessica’s dance team fees, so she applied at K-Mart for a second job. The store director permitted Marcy to have someone read the evaluation questions to her. She passed the test and was hired. She worked days at the high school and evenings and weekends at K-Mart.

Marcy had limited social skills, former Oregon City High School Principal Carol Kemhus recalls.
“But she was grateful for any opportunity. She wanted to do things right. She took her responsibilities seriously. Sometimes, too seriously.”

In hindsight, Marcy realizes she could be impatient and abrupt.

“Some of the kids called me Hall Nazi,” Marcy says.

Although she did not recognize it at the time, she now believes she resented the students who loitered in halls instead of attending class. Didn’t they know how lucky they were to be in school?

In 2004, Marcy, now 48, walked into a room where students received academic coaching to ask if someone would help her learn to read. Merry Gilbertson worked as the Special Education Coordinator. She agreed to do an informal assessment and found that Marcy’s sound-symbol association was rudimentary. She appeared to have a visual processing disorder.

Marcy worried she had failed the test. “I’m never going to learn to read,” she recalls.
However, Marcy was on Merry’s mind.

“I kept thinking, ‘I know how to help her,’” said Merry. “If I don’t, who will?”

They began working together twice each week. Merry sat directly behind Marcy, and together they touched and said each letter sound aloud. The neurological effect of hearing, saying, and touching at the same time imprints the brain in a particular way. Before Marcy could read words with fluency, she needed to be able to have more instantaneous recall of the sound associated with each letter.

“I thought she would give up on me,” Marcy says. “But she kept coming back.”

Together they worked on individual letters, then letter combinations. Three years later, Marcy read her first novel, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. She threw herself a fiftieth birthday party to celebrate her success and told everyone she had learned to read.

Knowing how to read is more than settling down with a good book. Marcy has developed the confidence to laugh at herself.

“When I first moved to Oregon,” she says, “I used to see “House For Sale” signs in people’s yards. I always wondered why so many people had horses for sale. When Merry taught me the sound difference between o-u and o-r, I suddenly understood they were selling houses. You see why you believe you’re dumb? If you can’t make sense of the world because you can’t read, you feel lost. When you learn to read, you hear conversations differently, so it changes your relationships.”

Over the last five years, Marcy and Merry have become friends. Merry believes a simple twist of fate gave them different beginnings. She admires Marcy’s perseverance and hard work.
Before she met Marcy, Merry thought differently.

“I bought some line that people could get by without reading. That technology could accommodate. I didn’t understand that learning to read actually changes the architecture of the brain.”

K-Mart manager Kristi Bays says Marcy is more confident. She can now write layaway orders and take payments. She can adjust prices on the shelves for the weekly ad. She trains new employees.

Marcy continues to work at K-Mart and at Oregon City High School. Some days she works two eight-hour shifts back-to-back. Sometimes she still struggles to find the right tone of voice or words to use. She tries to stop and ask herself, “How would someone else say this?”

Not long ago her son Teddy asked why she did not answer the letters he had written to her as a child.

“I saved them all,” she said, “but I didn’t know how to read.”

Last year she found the courage to return to the Navajo reservation to meet her father. For the first time in fifty years, he called her Belladonna.

When I asked what she would like non-readers to take away from this story, Marcy said, “They won’t be reading it, will they?” After laughing, she said, “I want them to know that there is someone out there, someone who is going to help you. It could take you years, but you’ve got to find them.”

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Deb Stone is a freelance writer from Beavercreek, Oregon, whose work has appeared in The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune, Asylum, Oregon Gourmet Foods, Poetic Voices, Kid-Bits and Willamette Writers.