SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Ruth Johnson Colvin, who founded Literacy Volunteers of America, was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and received the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, has died. She was 107 years old.
Colvin died on Sunday in Syracuse, New York, according to ProLiteracy, the nonprofit organization created by the merger of Literacy Volunteers and Laubach Literacy in 2002. She served on the organization's board of directors until her death.
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“We owe not only ProLiteracy’s existence to Ruth and her founding of Literacy Volunteers of America, but we are guided by her innate understanding that literacy is a right,” an online tribute said. “We are humbled to have been able to learn from her for so long. Ruth willingly shared her wisdom with ProLiteracy staff, always encouraging us to continue our fight to improve adult literacy.”
Colvin, herself an avid reader, launched Literacy Volunteers in 1962 to speak out against illiteracy and teach people to read after seeing 1960 census data that showed 11,000 illiterate people were living in the Syracuse area where she lived.
"In the 1950s, America was unaware it had an illiteracy problem. We thought illiteracy was in India, Africa, China. Not in America,″ she told The Associated Press before receiving the Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2006.
From its beginnings in Colvin's basement, her organization expanded across the United States and into numerous other countries, training volunteers in simple methods to teach reading. Her work would take her and her husband, Bob Colvin, through dozens of countries. The two were married for 73 years when Bob Colvin died in 2014.
Colvin was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1993 and received the President’s National Volunteer Action Award from President Ronald Reagan in 1987. She also wrote several books. One of them, “My Travels Through Life, Love and Literacy,” was a memoir published in 2020 when Colvin was 103.
“Sometimes you have to step away from security into trust and faith and into a belief in your passions,” she wrote.
She saved hundreds of letters she received over the years from tutors, students and supporters, the ProLiteracy tribute said.
“Those letters,” it said, “represented her life’s work and proved that anyone can make a difference in the lives of others.”