Interviewee: Sharon Darling

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R.39 Legacy of William Friday

Interview R-0643 Sharon Darling

28 May 2010

Transcript – 2

Interview number R-0643 from the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

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Interviewee: Sharon Darling

Interviewer: E. Willis Brooks

Interview date: May 28, 2010

Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Length: 1 disc, approximately 110 minutes

[Recording begins with a short discussion to set sound levels. Interview begins at

57 seconds.]

Willis Brooks: My name is Willis Brooks. Today is Friday, May 28th, and I will

be talking with Sharon Darling. And we will proceed for an understanding of the

National Center for Family Literacy. First, I want to start with material that’s already in

your resume, and we easily know it, but we’d like your take on some of these things.

We’d like to know where you think you came from, what kind of education you got that

got you started toward the commitments that we will get to, too.

Sharon Darling: Well, I think I started wanting to be an elementary school

teacher because my aunt had been an elementary school teacher. But also in my

background, my father was a building contractor. And the men who worked for him

were very valued in our family, my father was very committed to them: if they didn’t

have work then he would pay them anyway and take them hunting or whatever. But they

couldn’t read. And they were excellent at what they did – they could read blueprints,

they could find just about anyplace – but they could not read.

And so, they struggled a lot as society started getting more and more complicated,

as they had children, and as they bought houses and were taken advantage of because


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they really didn’t read what they were signing on to and how much interest they were

paying. [I watched] all the ways that my father tried to help them, and then I tried to help

them as I got a little bit older. So, I think in my background there was always the notion

that some people think there is a deficiency with people who can’t read when, in

actuality, they just can’t read, you know. They’re very accomplished in many other

ways.

WB: Can you remember when you first became aware of this and whether you

went out on-site with your father to work with these people, or in other ways became

involved, even before you went to college perhaps?

SD: Well, it was actually in grade school when I can remember them sitting

around the kitchen table, and I would be there, and my father would be trying to help

them and explain to them what this was, what this contract was, or what this note said

about their child and all the [other] things that they came to him for. There were six of

them that worked for him as a regular crew, and of all the six, each one, I think, named

one [of their children] after my father. He was that important as a reader to them and

support for them. So, it was early on [that I became aware of the struggles of adults that

couldn’t read.]

And then, when I started teaching elementary school, I taught second grade and I

taught in a very poor area in Louisville, Kentucky. I was really trying to help the

children who were struggling so much and while doing that, just thinking if those parents

could just get those children to school on time, if they just didn’t miss so much, you

know. I had thirty-six children in my class and I would try very hard to think about how I

could carve out time for this one student that really needed some extra help and what I


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could do, and then the child wouldn’t be there, or the child would come late, or the

mother would come to pick the child up. And so, I was so frustrated when I would talk

with the parents.

And back in the dark ages – I taught elementary school, second grade, for three

years and struggled all the time, trying to help these children. I’d work all summer trying

to figure out an individualized instruction program for them and what I could do

differently to make sure I met their needs and could teach them to read. But back in the

dark ages, when you became pregnant, at six months you had to leave the classroom. So,

you had to have a doctor’s note that said exactly when you would be six months pregnant

and you had to leave. So, I left the classroom at six months and started volunteering to

teach adults to read in a church basement.

I was kind of coerced into it. A man who taught adult education said, “Gee, I

know you’re not working right now. Why don’t you come over?” And I never did. I

waited until I had my child. And he asked me again, and he said, “They have a nursery

for your child.” So, I took the child and went over to this church. And you take

everything [that your child] would ever need for the first ten years of their life with you

when it’s your first one, and I walked in with all the paraphernalia. He took the baby

away and said, “I’m going to take the baby to the nursery.” He opened the door, and

there were five men sitting in there, and he said, “This is your new teacher.” And with

that, I thought, “If I ever get out of here and rescue my baby, I won’t be back.”

But I was so committed after that first day because they were so hungry to learn,

and they had tried everywhere for somebody to teach them, and they were so courageous.

I mean, they were just – you know, for them to have gone through what they went


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through just to find somebody who would help them [was amazing]. And so, those five

people became ten people, then twenty people, and pretty soon I was recruiting

volunteers because the word of mouth was getting out that there was someone to help

them.

WB: I want to get back to the notion of professionals and volunteers working

together at programs again later. But it seems to me so far you’ve said you had – you

learned while at home how grateful people were for help. And then you learned in the

basement of this church, again, how grateful people were for this help, and you already

were a committed teacher. Can you document in your own mind when you moved in

your mind from a teacher who would help individuals to an administrator who would

teach teachers?

SD: I think the way I moved into administration – and it was never a desire for

me. [Laughs] You know, I always wanted to just teach people to read. That was what I

got involved in and what I wanted to do. But what happened was, along the way, as more

and more people needed help, and I was recruiting more and more volunteers, then the

State Department of Education heard about what I was doing. And they came and said,

“We’d like to do this statewide and we’d love for you to help us organize it and get it

going.”

At the time, I had small children so I was just trying to work part-time. I had to

come up with a training device. You know, all of a sudden the things that I knew how to

do and were kind of instinctive for me and the way I diagnosed people’s reading or

learning problems had to be codified and in some way and translated to others so that

they could train. So, again, I relied on some of the existing material that was out there,


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the Laubach material, the LVA material, and combined those together, and used everyday

material. But I had to then move into a place where I was an administrator, a teacher-

trainer, an organizer of other literacy activities throughout the state.

WB: Yeah. So, you went through Laubach training, “C is for cup,” as well?

SD: Right.

WB: Have you maintained any contact with some of those people? Usually they

were classes of four to six or ten or fifteen people.

SD: You know, I have some that I still – there’s still a man that I see who

couldn’t read at all. And he drove– I guess an hour and a half to get to class – and he was

really somebody who just blossomed, and I still do see him. We correspond and he

writes.

WB: Well, as we know, the Laubach Program enabled you to start people from

Ground Zero, learning the letters of the alphabet.

SD: Um-hmm.

WB: As you developed your programs, did you find yourself working with

people of a wide range of backgrounds that needed help, from Ground Zero, learning the

letters of the alphabet, to people who were pre-GED? Or, when and how did you start

evolving into helping parents as well as kids and develop a program that could provide

assistance at all those levels?

SD: Well, I think one of the things that was – early on, the Laubach Program was

a good program because it gave you some structure and you could take off from it. But I

think you really zeroed in on what the challenge was. You know, not everybody needs to

start at Ground Zero. People have spotty skills, and I think that more and more that’s


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what you see in teaching adult literacy, is that somewhere along the way, they learned a

few things. And many of them moved every time the rent was due, and they didn’t have

any consistency, and so they might know some random things about reading, or they

might know some skills that would equate to maybe a third or fourth grader.

WB: Well, one of the skills they had to acquire is raising their hand and saying,

“I need help.”

SD: Right.

WB: And you have to wait for those or you have to cultivate those, and there’s a

gap until it’s bridged, until they come to you or you go to them. Which was it, most

often?

SD: Well, I think what happened was the word of mouth got out. You know,

they told other people. But in the beginning when I was starting this reading program en

mass when the State Department came and gave me enough money to really get up and

running –

WB: Describe that. I mean, are you talking about a series of classes, or your

teaching thirty people at a time? Not. What was the – how was the program set up?

SD: Well, when the class kept getting bigger at this church I did have thirty

people, but I would have many volunteers. And so, I would spend an inordinate amount

of time trying to figure out what everybody in that class was going to be doing at

different times during that three-hour block because they were all on different levels.

WB: Did you recruit all your volunteers from the church or not at all?

SD: No, no. Not at all.

WB: How did you find them?


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SD: I found them through the Retired Teachers Association, through the – you

know, social workers –

WB: Teachers never stop teaching.

SD: I just reached out. And then I coerced radio stations into running ads for me

to tell people that they could come to programs. I went to TV stations and morning

shows and told them that we had this opportunity for people who needed to read. And

then, when people called I tried to take every call when people would call, because they

[were very vulnerable].

WB: So, this time you had a desk and you had a phone.

SD: Right, I had a desk and I had a phone. But people wanted to tell you why

they couldn’t read. They wanted to make sure you weren’t going to judge them as stupid.

WB: Yes.

SD: And so they wanted to kind of make sure that whatever they did to walk into

this room was going to be safe. And so, in the beginning, we were mostly in community

centers, even though my grant was running through the public schools. But we were

mostly in community centers where people felt comfortable in attending.

WB: Who are these people? Are these often parents of kids in the schools? Is

there a disconnect there, or is there a connect?

SD: Well, some of them were parents. And I think starting where I did where I

had a nursery for my children, I was working with young parents, too, because they were

bringing their children to the nursery. And that was really exciting to me because you

could see the trajectory for their children, knowing their skill level and their lives that


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were just in upheaval most of the time. So trying to intervene early in that and make sure

that those children –

WB: Was this the beginning of family literacy, then, for you?

SD: It was. I mean, the seed was planted then.

WB: What year would that have been?

SD: Well, it was a number of years after that that family literacy actually

materialized for me, but the whole time I was helping these parents help their children. I

guess that was – oh, my gosh, that was in the – my oldest son was born in ’69, so it was

in the seventies, early seventies, when I was working doing that. And then in –

WB: Just after you stopped teaching elementary school?

SD: Right. So, then I really wanted to know more about what was effective in

my teaching of adult literacy. I had questions. You know, I wanted to know – does it

work better if the people I was hiring to go into these programs had a certain degree? Did

it matter if they were an elementary teacher? Did it matter if they were in the

community, community-involved? Did it matter if they were working with volunteers?

How about paraprofessionals, because we had all combinations of things?

WB: And what did you find?

SD: Well, I found that really the most effective was a teacher working with a

series of community volunteers because you had both. You had both elements, people

with [a tie to the community they served and with the knowledge of teaching.]

WB: A professional and a volunteer.

SD: Right. And I think that was what showed [success], you know. And then I

wanted to know if people that were employed or unemployed had a better chance of


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succeeding. So, I had all these questions. So, I met up with a researcher at Morehead

State University one day. We were just – I was at a lunch or something. And I said, “I

just really want to know some of these things so I can do a better job and I can make this

program as good as it can be.”

And he said, “Well, that’s fine.” He said, “Come to Morehead, gather up [your

information.”] That was when you had those cards [for computer analysis]. We

collected all this information. I think I spent my summer at Morehead, going back and

forth putting this into this huge machine, and it would spit out information. And pretty

soon we had a lot of information about what worked and how it worked and – you know,

some really good indicators pointing us in the right direction.

WB: Measurements of teacher effectiveness or measurement of students’

progress?

SD: Both. And everything else that I could think of that I wanted to know.

WB: Yes.

SD: Because I was just curious to know. And so some of the things – I was

sitting at the dining room table dividing things into piles, which I learned was a stratified

random sample, so I was happy about that. [WB laughs] But anyway, I learned more

about research that summer than I ever thought I needed to know.

But what that led to, then, was the fact that because we had that information

[about what worked for adult literacy] and nobody else in the country had it, [we were in

much demand when] all of a sudden everybody [started to get] excited about [adult]

literacy. President Reagan made a big announcement about it. And so, we were all on


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this path of adult literacy. Well, mine was the only one that had any kind of information,

valid kind of data on what worked in adult literacy.

WB: And you were already in family literacy at that point?

SD: Well, yes and no. Not family literacy in the way that we do it now, but

family literacy in that I ran a home instruction program for most of Kentucky where

[home visitors brought] things in for the parents to use with the children. So, there was

always this connect if they were parents. By this time I had had several children [and no

car], and somebody in class would come pick me up. This man from Elizabethtown

would put me in the pickup truck with my kids and [we would] go, so I could teach him

to read. So, it was all pretty kind of grass-rootsy.

But when the U.S. Department of Education said, “We would like for you to

apply for the National Diffusion Network –”

WB: So, they came and contacted you?

SD: Yes.

WB: By that time you had gotten local, regional shall I call it, and statewide

support from the Department of Public Instruction in Kentucky?

SD: Right.

WB: And when and how did you get this first contact from Washington?

SD: You had to turn in a report, because [I was using federal] money [that came

from] a special innovation grant.

WB: So, it was a federal grant?

SD: Well, it was a state grant. But the state then had to turn it into the feds,

because it really was federal money. So, they saw the data and said, “Gee, we want to


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encourage you. We don’t have any adult literacy programs in the National Diffusion

Network, and we would like to encourage you to submit your data.” You [had to] go

through this process that was pretty rigorous. I had no idea what I was getting into. I

thought, “Well, okay, I’ll do that.” Then you had to go and present it and defend it.

After [the adult literacy program] was approved, people all over the country were

calling me about implementing it, because it was in the National Diffusion Network. So,

then I had to apply for a grant to disseminate it, because I didn’t have any way to

disseminate it, and that was what was expected of you [as a part of the validation

process]. So, I guess when you say about getting into administration, I mean, it’s the

same thing. It was like, well, gee, you took this step. But now, since you took that step,

you’re going to have to take this next one, because everybody now wants information

about it. I didn’t have a brochure or anything.

WB: But as the water got deeper, you obviously were swimming very well. And

for a time, at least, it seems clear you were one of the very few, if not the only, people

doing this kind of thing. Were there other people who came along shortly after, not in

competition, but picking up and working with you? Were there people with whom you

worked during those years when you first got onto shall-we-say the federal level?

SD: There were people at the federal level who were very interested.

WB: Teachers, program administrators – not bureaucrats in Washington?

SD: Well, there were certainly some strong teachers and people that I ultimately

ended up hiring and taking with me wherever I went when I went to the State Department

of Education, which I did at some point. So, there were people that really believed, and

they were kind of the missionaries for it. And so, I applied for an AmeriCorps Grant, and


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my AmeriCorps volunteers went with me. We taught in Ohio and all across the country.

So, there was this cadre of people who really understood this at its very core.

WB: And it’s clear somebody in Washington understood it as well. We have this

general kind of statement that the folks at the Kenan Charitable Trust, including Bill

Friday, I assume, were contacted by Bill Bennett, who was then Secretary of Education in

Washington. [WB quotes from notes.] Bill Friday and I spent the day with him, and Bill

said, “What’s the most exciting thing going on in education that we can make a

difference?” He said, “I want you to go to Kentucky and meet Sharon Darling.” [SD

laughs] What’s your side of the story?

SD: Well, as I said, the adult literacy part of my work really drew some national

attention. But I decided in the early eighties that I really wanted to go back to my home

state of Kentucky, where we were the lowest in adult literacy in the nation, and see if I

couldn’t make a difference. But when I got there, what I really ended up – because early

childhood was starting to be something people mentioned so, they stuck it under me

because what else do you do with it? “She must not have much to do in adult education,”

[they must have thought.] So, pretty soon I had community education [and early

childhood.]

But what that did for me was – I started looking at Appalachia, thinking , “Why in

the world are we trying to just issue GED certificates or try to reclaim these adults when

their children, seventy percent of them sometimes, are not even making it out of the

schools?” You know, they were written off before they came in. The teachers

themselves knew where they came from and that there was just this [thinking that] their

parents were that way, their grandparents were that way.


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WB: Low expectations.

SD: Right, low expectations. Right. So, I looked at, “What could we do to kind

of break down those barriers?” So, I designed a program for family literacy. It was

called the Parent and Child Education Program.

WB: What year was this?

SD: This was in the early eighties. I guess ’84.

WB: High Reagan.

SD: Um-hmm, yeah. And so, looking at that, trying to get those parents out of

their isolation to be with other parents, trying to get preschoolers an early start, I designed

a program that brought preschool children, together with their parents, on a school bus to

the school. The children had a preschool program. The parents were right next door

getting the skills they needed. I then designed an interactive part where the parents

learned then how to work with their own children and saw what the early childhood

teacher was doing with their children, and then designed an opportunity for them to really

come together around parenting issues themselves, things that were holding them back.

So, that was the model that was designed.

WB: Indeed, I heard you even before you used the term “model” saying this is

what evolved out of it. Were there problems in finding and bringing together children

and parents and volunteers in these areas? It must be difficult to recruit really good,

energetic, competent teachers who would want to teach in such an area.

SD: We had an adult education system to draw on, so that was one thing. You

know, we could use the adult education world. The early childhood world we had some


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people there who probably were not certified at the time. They were not professionals,

but they were paraprofessionals teaching early childhood education.

WB: So, you looked for energy and commitment?

SD: Right. Energy and commitment – that’s what I wanted for both of them. I

mean, they might not have the special credential, but they had the heart for it, they had

the desire to learn, and we did a lot of teacher training back in those days to help them.

WB: Sounds like AmeriCorps today.

SD: It is. This was not AmeriCorps – this was paid teachers – but it’s the same.

So, I had a grant. I got the money from the [Kentucky] legislature to try this out. So, I

didn’t know the first thing about lobbying the legislature.

WB: Please tell me how you did it. [Laughs]

SD: [Laughing] I sat down with the – I found a book that had each of the

[legislators] pictures in it, and I knew where they were having a meeting [at a hotel]. So I

circled the ones that I really needed to talk with. So, when they would come in I would

[match them with their picture and] go talk with them about this idea.

And I happened to find Roger Noe, who was a representative from Appalachia

and Harlan, and he really loved the idea. He had gone in to read to children when he was

in graduate school, I think, in their homes. And so, he worked and worked to get it

funded. And so, we had six sites first, and then it expanded to eighteen the next year.

But it was kind of under the radar, so it didn’t cause a lot of trouble. You know, nobody

quite understood it, and so it wasn’t something that they were going to try to [defund].


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WB: But this is not serendipitous. It is clear by your circling the pictures of

people that you had a program, you had not just commitment and energy – you figured

out what your best chances were and went after them.

SD: Well, I did, and I’m very persistent. [Laughter] So, I found myself [in a

unique position]. If you’re at the State Department of Education, it’s unusual for you to

come up with something outside of the box and make it happen. And so, fortunately –

and I guess that’s what I mean by “nobody was paying attention.” You know, it was just

kind of something that I was able to do on the side because it wasn’t a part of the agenda

for the legislative agenda for the department. So it’s not a safe thing to do, but it

accomplished what we wanted to accomplish.

And then, after its second year, it won the Harvard Kennedy School of

Government Award for Innovations in State and Local Government. So, then it was

propelled into a national arena.

WB: And was that the point, or when is the point when Bill Bennett became

aware?

SD: Well, Bill Bennett was trying to set something [up] in adult literacy [when he

was Secretary of Education]. And so, he had called on me to come and work with him on

his adult literacy initiative. And then when he found out –

WB: In Washington?

SD: Uh-huh.

WB: Okay.


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SD: Then when he found out what I was doing in family literacy, he became very

intrigued and excited about it. He was trying to talk me into moving to Washington, and

I was like, “No, I’m fine where I am.”

Then, all of a sudden, I left the [Kentucky] Department of Education. It became

very political and my Superintendent of Public Instruction was running for office. And

pretty soon everything was about how can we use the money that you have to promote a

candidacy. And so, I knew it was time to go. You know, it just wasn’t going to be a

place where I could be comfortable. So, I –

WB: The focus was no longer on education.

SD: Right. So, I left and I was doing national consulting work. I did national

consulting work for VISTA volunteers, AmeriCorps helping them design their literacy

initiatives, and worked very closely with Secretary Bennett and Barbara Bush. Barbara

Bush was a very close friend of mine from the time she became the Vice President’s

wife. So, I used to go and brief her once a month at her home.

WB: And her commitment is continuing to this day.

SD: Right. I just had lunch with her a couple of weeks ago. She’s just wonderful

still. But she and Bill Bennett, then, started these literacy breakfasts. So, we would get

together for breakfast at the Vice President’s home or at the Department of Education and

we would talk about the literacy issues that we were working on.

WB: What kinds of other people would be brought into these, presumably to

educate them as well as to tap on them?

SD: There were people – we were working with ABC and PBS, so the head of

ABC, the president of ABC, Jim Duffy at the time, and PBS were there. We had people


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that were business leaders – Harold McGraw, for example – so we had just a smattering

of people who had a broad interest but who were trying to drive this agenda of literacy.

WB: But Bill Bennett was the point person, I take it?

SD: Right. So, Bill Bennett – well, and Barbara Bush, so the two of them, and

then Barbara Bush came to see what I was doing in Kentucky in family literacy. And

that’s another whole sidebar, but when she came to see what I was doing, [she decided]

that is what she wanted to do. The Republican Women, before her husband became

President, gave her some money to do something with a foundation. And she said, “I

want to do what Sharon’s doing in Kentucky.” And so, that became her Foundation for

Family Literacy.

WB: Did you work with her then?

SD: Uh-huh, yes.

WB: What kinds of things did you do together?

SD: Well, we did a lot of things together. We did fundraisers, we did media

tours, we did all kinds of things, you know. We –

WB: Across the state, or in particular areas that you might have identified?

SD: No, in the country. No, just across the country.

WB: Across the country. Okay.

SD: So, she started initiatives in Texas because that was their home, and so I

worked with her on family literacy there. Then we went to Florida with Jeb [Bush], and

then we went to Maine. So, now she also has one – Doro [Bush Koch] is doing a

Celebration of Reading in Maryland. So, anyway, it’s branched out, and so, I’ve worked

with her along the way. And I’m still on her board and still see her and go up to College


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Station and have lunch at their apartment. So, she’s still a very dear friend, but she did so

much for literacy.

So, all of this is happening and kind of swirling around. And I’ve left the

Department of Education in Kentucky. And all of a sudden I get a call from Bill Friday.

He said, “You know –“

WB: So, he was the one who made the initial contact?

SD: Uh-huh. He said, “I’ve been talking with Secretary Bennett. He suggested I

call you. We really want to do something that’s systemic and important in literacy.” And

he said, “We’d like to come see you maybe. I’d like to bring somebody with me and just

come see you, and maybe we could see a program.”

WB: This would have been Tom Kenan?

SD: Uh-huh. And so, I didn’t know them nor really do much [to research their]

work – you know, you didn’t Google somebody in those days. So –

WB: Do you remember what year or conditions or timing in terms of your own

programs?

SD: [Pauses] Well, I don’t really remember the year, but I think it must have

been – well, it was ’88, I think, ’87 or ’88.

WB: That sounds right.

SD: And so as I said, I didn’t know – I mean, I think if I had known who I was

dealing with – I mean, Bill Friday. I was not from the higher education world and so I

really didn’t know – nor Tom Kenan, you know – any kind of history with them. As I

said, you didn’t Google people in those days, and I was busy right up until the day they


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came. I went to the airport, picked them up, threw them in the car, and we went to

Spencer County to see one of the programs.

WB: Which program?

SD: The PACE Program, Parent and Child Education Program.

WB: Okay.

SD: And they loved it.

WB: So, they sat down in the little chairs?

SD: Well, they sat first with the parents. And I think one of the observations that

Bill Friday made was, he said, “I just thought I’d see these people being so depressed and

so sad because of where they live and the poverty, and they couldn’t read.” And he said,

“You know, they weren’t. They were all full of hope and excited.” There was, I think, a

man in that class, too along with the women, and they just couldn’t wait to tell the stories

of what their life was like, but then what they wanted to do with their life. You know,

they were excited about their progress.

And then, they had an opportunity to see them interact with their children and

have what we call PACT time, Parent and Child Together time. So, by lunchtime, we

stopped at the Holiday Inn on the way back in and had a hamburger, and they said, “Do

you think you could move to Chapel Hill?”

And I thought, “Well, who are these people anyway?” [Laughs] I said, “No, I –”

WB: “And where is Chapel Hill?” [Laughs]

SD: Right. [Laughter] I was kind of new to the University of North Carolina in

Chapel Hill. But I said, “No, I really don’t think I could. You know, I have children, and

my parents are here, and – you know.” And we talked, and they were excited about it


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and [I] really thought – you know, and I had every intention of going back to the state

department in Kentucky, because I felt like my work was unfinished, and I was going to

go back there.

But when they talked to me about maybe setting it up in North Carolina and

trying it out, we looked for a fiscal agent. So, we kind of talked back and forth and ended

up going through Southern Regional Education Board as a fiscal agent for it and a

support for it in the beginning of 1988. And, all of a sudden it just seemed the right thing

to do to me. And I was excited about knowing them and their interest and their

excitement over it and the fact that they had resources to put into it, which would be

private resources, which would be so important because you have the flexibility.

WB: Was that your first private funding?

SD: Oh, sure. I mean, I had no idea about any of it. And so, it was a great

opportunity for me. And to meet Bill Friday – oh, my gosh! I mean, he could talk to

those parents. He could sit on the floor with those children. He was just the most

marvelous man I had ever met. He’s the most engaging man with everybody he meets, I

mean, it doesn’t matter who they are. He’s interested in them and wants to hear from

them. And I just found him just absolutely a – it was just a wonderful day in my life just

to have been enriched – to know him, you know.

WB: How frequent was your contact with him, or with Tom Kenan, in the year or

two or three after that?

SD: Constant.

WB: Constant?

SD: Constant. I mean, I –


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WB: Telephone? Travel? Here?

SD: I was here a lot with the Kenans, and always coming to the board meetings.

And I was – you know, Bill Friday was so engaged in this program, and he was telling

everybody he knew in the country about it. And so, then they were all engaged, and by

the end of the first year, I think, we had five thousand requests for information on the

program. They were probably five thousand people that Bill Friday talked with.

[Laughter] He knows everybody! And Tom Kenan would go with me, and we’d go visit

programs, and Bill Friday did, too.

WB: So, you helped start programs elsewhere? I’m not sure.

SD: Well, we did here in North Carolina. We started – I said, “Well, if we do

North Carolina, I’d like to do some urban ones in Louisville.”

WB: Okay. How did you do North Carolina first, and then I’ll get back to

Louisville?

SD: How did we do North Carolina?

WB: Yeah. Which cities? Which locations?

SD: Well, we tried to get kind of diversity in where we picked, so we were in

Vance County. Is it Hendersonville?

WB: Yes, just north of here.

SD: And Wilmington, Asheville, Fayetteville.

WB: Okay. Do you remember how they or you chose those areas? They’re quite

distinctly different in this state.


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SD: I think it was just sitting down with Bill Friday and talking about what might

work trying to look at some different parts of the state and different cultural mixes, I

guess, so we could learn from it.

WB: Um-hmm. It’s a huge long state, so Asheville’s mountains, Wilmington is

down east, Fayetteville is the military, and Vance is kind of rural outside Raleigh and the

like. It’s a nice cross-section. And did those programs equally succeed?

SD: They did equally succeed, I mean, they were all successful. I think the one

in Asheville was probably the one that affected me most.

WB: How’s that?

SD: It was actually in Madison County. It wasn’t actually in Asheville. It was

out; it was in Madison. And I think because the woman –

WB: So, it’s this side of Appalachia?

SD: Um-hmm. The woman that I met there, Mildred Shelton, was the teacher,

and she went out and collected people to come to her program. I mean, she’d get in her

car and go out. She got her GED when her son graduated from high school. She got her

college degree when her son graduated from college. And she had worked around her

kitchen table helping people all of her life. And so, she had this passion for it that was

just amazing, and she did such a great job.

And so, we – one of the people there, one of the students, had been someone that

she went into the country to talk into coming into the program. And she was so shy, and

her hair was down in her face, and [missing] some of her teeth, I think. But Mildred

Shelton kept bringing her in, bringing her in, and she just blossomed, you know. And she

got some work done, and she cut her hair out of her face, and she was just wonderful.


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And she, at the end of that first year, scored a perfect score on the GED literature test,

which I’ve never heard of anybody scoring a perfect score. She started writing poetry,

and she wrote a poem that we used as our first annual report.

But she just was amazing to me. She never had thought about going on to college

or anything like that, and she got a full scholarship to Mars Hill College, and she

graduated second in her class. By the time she graduated, she had been to our conference

and so many folks knew her, and the First Lady of Hawaii sent a lei for her to wear at the

graduation. That program, to me, was really the anchor, I guess, for everything we did,

because it just showed what was possible in an area where there were so many

impossibilities.

WB: Everybody needs a kitchen table.

SD: Yeah, they do.

WB: It serves two purposes. It’s the best light in the house [SD laughs], and it

also means other members of the family are walking around and making sure you do your

work.

SD: Yeah, that’s true.

WB: Maybe somebody ought to put in a grant some day to get kitchen tables for

all these homes. [SD laughs] Okay, the programs in North Carolina, then, went pretty

well, so you went back to Louisville or back to Kentucky.

SD: Well, at the same time I was starting the ones when I first received the

Kenan money, when I started the ones in North Carolina, I also started the urban ones in

Louisville. So, I wanted to get in the inner city, because we hadn’t done that. We were

doing mostly rural.


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WB: No temptation to do Charlotte or Raleigh?

SD: No, I really wanted to have [programs] in Louisville, so we had some in

Louisville. And so, we were able to gather all that information, collect it. I had [a

professor at UNCW], the Kenans, Bill Friday, in their wisdom, knew that we needed a

researcher on this from the very beginning. So, we had Andy Hayes from the University

of North Carolina-Wilmington, who helped from the very beginning and is now still on

my board after all these years. But he really – you know, to have that kind of help and to

be able to talk about what we were learning and what the accomplishments were was just

invaluable. So, he was a terrific supporter.

But Bill Friday was really the mentor and the guide for all of this because again, I

didn’t know anything about private fundraising. I didn’t come from a privileged

background. You know, he helped me so much. We would go in, and I’d – I don’t know

if he’d even want me saying this, but we would get ready to go into the board meeting,

the Kenan board meeting. We went in New York to JP Morgan and he said, “Now,

remember, you’re the little girl with the hole in her shoe from Kentucky.” And I thought,

“Okay.”

But always, always Bill Friday, for me, would guide me enough. I mean, he

wasn’t going to tell me what to do, but I always felt like if you were perceptive enough to

pick up on his clues, he could help you immensely. But he wasn’t going to coach you

into “this is what you have to say or how you have to act.” It was a marvelous way to

work because you were still yourself, you were still authentic, you were not scripted to do

anything, and yet you had enough of a clue or some verbal notion that, if you read it

right, it would really help you.


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WB: What you seem to be saying is that he trusted you, and it’s pretty obvious he

did. Did he often say – give you the image of the hole in your shoe? Or was it just that

one time?

SD: It was just that one time. But, I mean, it did – and before I met Frank Kenan

for the first time, he said, “Frank is a Southern gentleman.” And that was all he said. He

said, “I think you’ll like him. He’s a Southern gentleman.” But that was enough for me

to know that – you know.

WB: A lot.

SD: Right.

WB: That first Cossack raid that they made on you in Kentucky – how long were

they there? One day? More?

SD: Just one day.

WB: Just one day. Flew home that night?

SD: Yep. I took them back to the airport.

WB: And how long before you heard or proposed – which way does it go here?

SD: They actually started working through Bill Bennett’s office to get back in

touch with me. And so, we worked some on a proposal, and I worked with Bill Bennett’s

office. And I didn’t know if it was actually going to happen. But they decided to set up

an office for me in Louisville, which was a real stretch for them, I mean, that’s a real –

you know, to set up an office somewhere else with just this one person.

WB: This is not the government working.

SD: No.


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WB: It’s something that only private universities, private foundations can have

the intelligence and the initiative and the ability to move quickly.

SD: And I was –

WB: How long did it take?

SD: To get it done?

WB: Yeah.

SD: Well, it was interesting. Frank Kenan was always a wonderful man in my

life, too, because he always challenged you to do something that you didn’t think you

could do. He’d get that little twinkle in his eye and he’d say – he said, “Well,”, you

know, after we went for a year with SREB funding I got the office set up in a hurry and

all that. But I went to the board meeting, and he said, “It just seems like it’s just

cumbersome to go through SREB.” He said, “We’d kind of like to set you up as your

own center.” And he said, “So, if you can get a nonprofit established within the next

week, I’ll send you the money.”

WB: [Laughs] And you’d never established a nonprofit?

SD: No, I didn’t know anything about it. But he had that little twinkle [which

made me know he was trying to see what I could do], so I immediately went out and

called [my contact at] Coopers & Lybrand, which was, you know, [a large accounting

firm]. And so, I went out and called Jim [Ratcliffe], who was the head of that

organization, because he had been on the State Board of Education, and I knew him well.

And said,“I need to set this up.” And then I called Wilson Wyatt, who was one of the

leading attorneys and statesmen in Kentucky.


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And so, I came back after the break and I said, “Well, I have the largest law firm

in Kentucky and Coopers & Lybrand onboard, and they’re going to help me do this, and

we’ll try to get it done in a week.” And they just laughed. And so they got Braxton

Schell then, who was their attorney [to] start working with me, and we did get it done. I

think it was Good Friday or something, and we were working on it still. But always

Frank Kenan loved to challenge me, you know. And of course, that’s Bill Friday behind

the scenes, but he always would throw something out there to see if you could do it, you

know.

When I think about what’s happened in this country in family literacy, none of it

could have happened without Bill Friday. Now, granted we had some momentum, and

we had some state money, and we had some other people who were interested. But Bill

Friday was really the catalyst that put it over the edge and is responsible now for millions

of people that we’ve helped through the Center.

WB: Did they ever encourage you to do anything that you didn’t feel you wanted

to do or could do?

SD: No, I don’t think so.

WB: They pretty much gave you carte blanche?

SD: They gave me the lead, you know. And I said to them some time later,

“Gosh, you really trusted me a lot to be able to do this because this was a lot for you to

invest.” You know, for a long time, I mean, after I started the Center, I would think – I

had a checkbook and if you’re used to working in government, it’s like, “Who do I ask if

I can do this? If I’m going on this trip, or – you know, who should I ask?” And the

kinds of things that you were so used to [that held you back.] Then all it just started


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feeling so good that you really had an opportunity to do what you needed to do and

thought that you needed to do.

And Bill Friday coached me on the board, too, which was really valuable to me.

Of course, with a nonprofit you need to have a board But [Bill Friday] said, “Don’t get

yourself a big board where you’ve got to feed their egos and all that.” He said, “You

know what you need to do, so get somebody that’s going to watch out for your back in

the legal and finance [areas]. Get some good people that you can depend on, but not

people that you have to make them think everything is their idea.”

WB: So, in retrospect, perhaps that quick visit with them and your hamburgers

and other things that day may well have changed a great deal in your life?

SD: Well, absolutely. It changed my life dramatically. And it’s not anything I

ever aspired to do but it was just the most marvelous opportunity for me.

WB: Were there mentors local that you could say, “This just happened to me, and

I’m not sure I understand it, but this is what it looks like?” Were there people to whom

you turned regularly?

SD: There were, I mean, the people who were on my board: Mike Harreld, who

was the president of the bank, Wilson Wyatt [from Wyatt Tarrent & Combs], and Jim

Ratcliffe, who was the head of Coopers & Lybrand --they were seasoned people who

knew things that I didn’t know, and they were very helpful to me. And I had an –

WB: Well, you knew things they didn’t know.

SD: Well, about literacy. But I had an advisory board that Bill Friday also

suggested I set up, because I knew a lot of people already in the country. I had already

done a lot with adult literacy, and so the people like Jim Duffy, who was the president of


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ABC, said, “Sure, I’ll be on.” Wally Amos, [Founder of] Famous Amos [Cookies] – so

all the people that I knew – Paul Simon, Senator Simon, was a good friend.

WB: A very strong supporter of literacy.

SD: And then, Bill Friday got Bob Atwell from ACE. So, I had a really strong

board of advisors – Bill Goodling from Congress. So, that was kind of my place where I

could go and ask questions to people that knew more than I did in those areas.

WB: What kinds of questions were you asking? Were you trying to think of

ways to change – just to broaden, or fundamentally to change what you were doing?

SD: No, I was just trying to broaden. I mean, I was trying to say, “What kind of

visibility could I get on this if we were doing something on ABC?” You know, Tom

Brokaw did something on the Program early on, the Kenan Program, and that was a result

of working with Jim Duffy and others.

So it was mostly – you know, some of them were researchers, famous researchers.

Some were Congress people. How do we get the [Kenan model into legislation]? You

know, testifying in Paul Simon’s committee and trying to move the agenda forward.

Wherever we could find the hook for literacy, could we slide in family literacy? So, it

was really – it was an exciting time and a growth opportunity for the [newly created] field

[of family literacy].

But Bill Friday was the one who was always there. He actually then decided

[that] the people in Louisville [should] contribute and wanted them to step up to the plate.

And so, he convened a lunch with all the city fathers, and they all showed up, because we

were kind of using – I was kind of using the threat of, “This could go back to Chapel

Hill.” You know, “If you want this in your community, then we really need to support it


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31

here.” So, he called together all the city fathers, and we had a lunch, and they said they

definitely would support it and they wanted it in the community. And so, then they

started putting money away in the Louisville Community Foundation for the purposes of

an endowment. And then, ultimately, the Kenan Trust gave me a challenge for

endowment, [that if I raised $1 million each year for four years, the trust would match it

with $500,000]. I was able to meet that [challenge] so that was another [great

opportunity].

WB: And is that a continuing commitment, then, on your part to work closely

with the folks at Kenan?

SD: You know it was for so many years. But after Bill Friday left, and with the

new leadership, I’m having a hard time connecting. And after Frank died, I guess, really,

too, because Frank was so instrumental in it and I don’t keep up as much with Betty. I’m

going to have lunch today with Tom and Bill Friday, which I’m really looking forward

to. But the Trust changed, I think, dramatically what their giving strategy is.

And I – sometimes I’m regretful that they don’t want to hear what’s happened

after twenty-something years of this program. [They should] take credit or pride in

something that a foundation that’s – I mean, it’s not a huge foundation, but that their

foundation really started a revolution in the country in education.

WB: Various foundations consider themselves, starting with the Ford

Foundation, as pump-primers. And they feel they’ve got something started, it’s going

well, we need to try to do the same or similar to some other – you have programs from

Hawaii presumably to Maine, and now you say in many countries as well. I’d like to

know what kind of differentiation you found necessary from state to state, if any, in


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finding people, finding volunteers as well as finding and training professionals, as well as

training volunteers, as well as what kinds of new issues may have appeared when you

moved to other countries?

SD: Gosh, that’s a big one. [Laughs] I guess –

WB: Was Hawaii a novel adventure?

SD: Yeah, I started in Hawaii really early, because they were one of the first state

adopters. You know, they really wanted to do it. I think the Hawaii folks – what I found

was so wonderful there and so easy for us was that they have a real collaborative spirit

there, much more so than I found in many of the other states. It was just kind of a natural

thing, and I don’t know if it was because there are so many cultures that have come

together there. But people really, really came together to work together, and they had the

business community, and so we were able to really make some huge inroads there.

And the First Lady of Hawaii, of course, was so instrumental in all the work there.

She was so interested in everything we were doing and really the catalyst to make sure it

got funded and kept going.

WB: So, I’m going to assume not every state was like Hawaii. [Laughs]

SD: Not every state was like Hawaii, but all of –

WB: [Laughing] Do we go to Maine?

SD: Yeah, Maine. Maine actually they’ve taken off with it and done a good job.

You know, I tried – what I tried to do, then, was codify it in Congress. I mean,

the strategy that I created was to try to get on the ground, demonstrate what worked, how

effective it could be, that it might work better than something else they’re spending their

money on, and then take the results to Congress and try to change the laws. So, we


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changed every law that had to do with either parent – you know, adults or children. So,

everything that moved in Congress, we just attached onto it family literacy.

We first got a federal definition of “family literacy,” so that was really important

because then people couldn’t water it down or change it into something else. So, we had

one federal definition, which was a big deal, in retrospect. And then, we went to the

Head Start Law and made family literacy a priority in it. We went to the Adult Education

Law and changed it to say Adult Education and Family Literacy and we put some money

in. And we worked with Bill Goodling to create the Even Start legislation, which

ultimately then started funding family literacy programs. So, we became kind of the air

traffic controller out there, you know.

WB: How did you get the federal legislation for a definition of family literacy?

SD: Well, we just worked with Congress, you know. [Laughs]

WB: Well, I – you say “we.” I want to hear who, where, when, why, how.

SD: Well, by that time, I had people with me in the organization, and so – Bill

Goodling was really our champion. And he was the chair of the Education and Labor

Committee during the Bush years, and before that he was Minority Education and Labor.

And he really, really believed in family literacy.

And so I think it was serendipitous. I just happened to be up there talking to Paul

Simon’s staff and knew that I was working with Bill Goodling on family literacy. And

they were working on something that was kind of vaguely close to it, and I said, “Oh, gee

let me just get you what they’re working on over in the House.” And so, we plugged that

in, and so then we had both Paul Simon and Bill Goodling working on the same

legislation, and it got passed.


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34

But there were a lot of lessons we learned in that, too, you know. But, I mean, my

goal was to try to loosen up all the silos of funding so that on the community level if

people wanted to use it for this, they could. So, we worked mostly with pre-school and

then we moved into the in-school model. But along the way, Toyota has been just

incredibly important, too.

WB: I was going to get there. I’d like to finish off a few states first, but I do

want to get to Toyota, for sure. Hawaii has got multi-ethnicity as a major issue, and you

said that, perhaps, was a strength, as far as you were concerned: People worked together.

SD: Um-hmm.

WB: Maine has distances and small populations and difficulties of access to lots

of people.

SD: Right.

WB: And, while they have the French-Canadian population in parts, as well, it’s

quite a different kind of a situation. Were there – there were problems, but what? Were

there different approaches necessary to get over a state that is largely barren, compared to

Hawaii?

SD: Well, I mean, I think our model, our original model with rural communities

using the school buses, was an important one for Maine and for a lot of the rural

communities. When we came to North Carolina, they threw up the roadblock and said

nobody under the age of, or over the age of twenty-one could ride the school bus. It’s the

law. So, we had to change the law in North Carolina in order to let these parents come.

So, then, everybody has this rule about insurance for parents. You know, there

are all these little things that get in the way, whether it’s a rural state or you’re working in


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35

an urban area. But the buses became a big deal, and also the lunches being able to pay

for that out of the school food lunch program. What we had to do was enroll these

parents as students, so that they were students in the schools. And then, if you did that,

they were entitled to all these other things. But there were just things along the way.

But I think one of the most challenging areas where we’ve worked were on forty-

two Native American program sites on reservations in – I don’t know how many states,

but we’ve been there since 1991.

WB: I saw your reference to Native Americans and I was somehow sure it was

not going to be Kentucky alone, but how did you – was that an administrative decision:

We’re going to go to Native American sites?

SD: No.

WB: No?

SD: They came to us.

WB: Interesting.

SD: They were interested in early childhood.

WB: Sure.

SD: And so, they came to us and Parents As Teachers out of Missouri and

wanted us to work together to get a comprehensive approach from birth to five. And they

wanted the parent piece very much on their Indian reservations. The first couple of years

of funding of those programs, I mean, I would have closed the doors. It was just – the

money never got to where it was supposed to, you couldn’t even find the work on these

sites. It was just so frustrating. But the Bureau of Indian Education stuck with it and


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they really invested heavily in training and technical assistance. So, those programs are

just absolutely wonderful.

WB: Did they do the recruiting, too?

SD: Yeah, sure, I mean, because we were going through the schools.

WB: Sure.

SD: And we worked on recruitment and retention, and so the way the model –

WB: Of volunteers as well as professionals?

SD: Uh-huh, right.

WB: Wow!

SD: So, it’s been just an incredible learning experience for us, and the culture is

so rich. But, again, I mean, we had to revise everything we were doing. I mean, you

don’t just plop in a model [without looking at]culture. And so, I think we’ve always been

good at trying to see what’s there and what we need to do in order to make it stick, you

know.

WB: That was a culture within a culture, and a state within a state, so to speak,

when you’re talking about Native American reservations.

SD: Um-hmm, right. And they really, I mean, they are just – we just celebrated

twenty years with them. We had an event, and it’s just wonderful to see what’s been

accomplished. Every year we have an essay contest and we have winners and we publish

the winners. But just the depth of poverty and despair on some of those reservations is

just mind-boggling.

But this program, I mean, we hear from the parents, saying, “Finally you’re

saying that I have something to share with my own children.” You know? Because I


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37

think their whole culture is so shocked always by what’s happened in the past when they

took their children away to boarding schools. And you’ll go into – I mean, we try to

preserve their native language as well, and so in every – if you go into a preschool

classroom there you’ll see something written in English and something in Navajo on all

the labels. So, we really try to preserve their culture and their language. And some of

their languages are disappearing, and so –

WB: Yes, many of them.

SD: Um-hmm.

WB: What’s the last state you got into? Are you in every state?

SD: Um-hmm, yes, we have programs in every state. And when I say we have

programs in every state, it varies about our involvement in it because as it got bigger and

bigger and bigger the last thing we needed to do was have our hands on it everywhere.

What we needed to do was just be growing a movement and leading a movement and

trying to get Congress to pay attention, trying to get states to pay attention, as they’re

making laws. Like right now we’re working on a lot of things in Congress, but just

trying to make sure that we could be the ones who could share the information. We have

an annual conference where we have about two thousand people who come together from

around the country. They go back and share what they’ve learned. And so, we just keep

fueling the field. It gets harder and harder, you know.

WB: This is a long way from the basement of a church.

SD: Yes, it is.


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WB: I mean, in fact, you’re up in the steeple somewhere. And yet, you’ve been

able to direct guidelines for yourself and for others all the way through these many-

storied kinds of structure. I crossed from church to secular, I see there.

How have you gotten education? Everybody needs more education. And you

have, at times, suggested that it was lucky, it was serendipitous, it was accidental – it was

whatever. I’m sorry, that just doesn’t carry the freight. It’s clear that you had goals. The

goals have changed and broadened, and others have helped you in reassurance that your

goals continue to be the highest. Can you talk about your own evolution in this process,

not just going to see Senator Simon or somebody like that? Can you talk about how and

when you decided, sitting by yourself on some occasion, certainly, “I can do this,” or “I

don’t want to go there?”

SD: I think – I had excellent professionals with me in the beginning of our

organization. You know, there were just four or five of us: there was an early childhood

specialist, an adult literacy specialist we had somebody who really kind of worked with

government and policy work, and somebody who worked with parent work. And they

became a team and they were strong, but they were committed. You know, we were in it

together and we were all doing it for the right reasons. And so, I think we – you know, I

guess at that point, whether it was conscious or not, I was making a shift away from any

kind of technical knowledge to more leadership, I guess.

WB: Broad gauge.

SD: Yeah, and so trying to look at a broad spectrum of things. So, the training

that was developed was really that team of people developing the training, and they were

the ones that were delivering it. And so we grew that way. And I guess what was the


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39

hardest for me was pretty soon I was managing an organization. You know, it was – I

didn’t know anything about managing an organization.

WB: A long way from third grade.

SD: Right. And when people – you know, when the trainers and the folks who

were there, the experts in the field of education, that was fine, because we were all just

small and all going for it, you know. But then, as you started needing to add more staff

who may or may not have the commitment to the mission – you know, they were there

for other purposes or didn’t really have the experience in working with the families that

we work with – and pretty soon you were managing. You had to have things like policies

and procedures. You had to have all these things that come with that. And it was just so,

you know –

WB: Daunting.

SD: Yeah, it was very daunting. And at the same time I was doing speeches all

across the country. I think every week it seems like I was doing a keynote speech

someplace, trying to help people understand what this was, you know. So, it would be

business people, or I worked with the National Governors Association, and so it was just

– it was like it just took off. As my father said, “You really have a tiger by the tail and

you can’t let go, can you?”

And it was that way for me. And so, I was trying to manage and I don’t think I

did a very good job of that. I kept trying to get people in who could manage. You know,

I would think, “Well, they must know this.” So, “You go and run this.” [Laughs]


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WB: Did you ever go to executive training programs or take courses or keep

contact with a mentor from a college or university that might have contributed to your

further education about how to handle things?

SD: I did, and again that brings us back to Bill Friday.

WB: Really?

SD: Bill Friday said, “Why don’t you go to Leadership at the Peak at the Center

for Creative Leadership?” Fabulous experience, and then I stayed connected to their

network. So, I was able to get all the things, their publications, their – you know,

occasional papers. And I was carrying around books all the time about the one-minute

manager, the this or the that, because it never – when people said they were majoring in

business management, I would think “Why would you want to manage if you don’t have

something to manage?” [Laughing] I mean, it does make sense to me.

WB: It does, yeah.

SD: You know, so –

WB: How often were you in contact with Bill, then, or with other members of the

Kenan Charitable Trust?

SD: I was in contact with Bill Friday every week. I mean, I don’t think I went

through a week for a number of years without getting advice from Bill Friday.

WB: Calling him? Or did he often call you?

SD: He often called me. And he would always coach me. I mean, if I came to

North Carolina, he’d say, “Now, give Frank a call before you leave the state. Just let him

know you’ve been here and how things are going.” And so, he – you know, he helped

me navigate the Kenan Trust, too. You know, he helped me know what to do. And he


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still sends people to see me that he thinks might be helpful in terms of funding or any

other way to help us.

WB: Does he send people to you whom you might help?

SD: Well, he does. I mean, there are people – I guess the latest, and I don’t

know, I mean, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying this, but he called not too

long ago and he had done an interview with James Maynard, who had started the Golden

Corral. And he said that he’s very interested in doing something as a legacy for his

success. And so, he said, “I encouraged him to come and talk with you.” So, he flew up

and brought his daughter and someone else, and we had a nice talk, and he spent the day.

He went to look at a program, and we’re still working with him trying –

WB: No hamburgers?

SD: No, this was Golden Corral food.

WB: Yes, ma’am. I heard you. [Laughter]

SD: I think what Bill Friday saw was that maybe we could help him crystallize

his thoughts and think through [what he wanted to do]. I mean, I wasn’t really just

saying that we needed to do something with – that it was our initiative he needed to fund,

but is there a way that we could help him think about scaling up?

And we’ve done some things with McDonald’s all over southern California where

they feed a million families a day. And we have something called Family Literacy

Mealtime Night, so they fund it, and we have stringers – you know, trainers – that are out

there, and we go for six weeks. They have a lottery to see who can get in, because

everybody wants to come. So, they bring their families, and it’s usually in low-income

areas, and we help them with – you know, one night will be science, one will be math –


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take-home things they can do and things they can do around mealtime. So, it’s been – so,

we have a history of working with some corporations and developing some signature

programs for them.

WB: How many private funders have you ultimately been involved with?

SD: Oh, gosh, that would be hard to say.

WB: Dozens?

SD: Yeah, dozens, for sure.

WB: Talk about Toyota. How did you get in touch with Toyota and what kind of

impact did they have on your aspirations and programs?

SD: Toyota has just been extremely important, also. They actually came to me. I

mean, I know this sounds like a broken record, but they – when they started the New

York office, which I think is an interesting story, they – they had a California office, a

sales office and they had some manufacturing plants. But when they started the New

York office, I think it was in – this might have been ’88 or ’89 – anyway, they really

were interested in doing something in philanthropy, and they didn’t want to do just what

other Japanese companies had done. They wanted to kind of do something that would be

what the nation needed and wanted. And philanthropy is not even a word in Japan. I

mean, it’s just not anything they do. They take care of their workers.

WB: Yeah, family support.

SD: Right, families. So, it was new to them. And so, they looked around, they

hired some consultants, and they decided that what they wanted to invest in was early

childhood, [which] was something the nation wanted and needed. And so, they started

looking around at programs and they found me. I don’t know exactly how, but they


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found our program. And they were looking at a number of other programs and they had a

Japanese gentleman who came with another man and just sat down and talked with me.

WB: Another hamburger-visit?

SD: Another hamburger-visit.

WB: Okay.

SD: So, we talked, and they went away, and then they came back again and they

came back again. It took a series of like eighteen months. And at the time, I don’t know,

I was naïve enough just to think I was just going to have Kenan money and just keep on

going forever, you know.

WB: Which would have been very satisfying.

SD: Yes, it would have been great. But Frank, at one of the meetings, said,

“Now, we’re not going to fund you forever, you know.” And I thought, “Oh, gosh, that’s

the first time I heard that.” [Laughing] “I’m scared now.”

But Toyota came, and we were still really little. And they kept asking the

questions and asking the questions – it took them eighteen months. I mean, they would

have all kinds of people weigh in. You know, they would want to fly me here or there or

Detroit to meet these people. And they just all asked questions about [the program] and

so everything that Toyota did helped me sustain programs, because they kept asking,

“Well, if you made this decision, then what would you expect to see in five years? And

then, what would you expect to see in ten years? And how would that work? You know,

what would you do to make sure that’s going to work?”

WB: They forced you to think in ways you really needed to think.


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SD: Right. And it was just – it was the most – it’s been the most important thing

for the field and the sustainability of [family literacy]. So, they gave – they’ve now given

me thirty-seven million dollars and they’ve been our partner since 1991.

WB: And how have they asked you to use their funds?

SD: What we proposed to them is still the same model that we’re using, is that

we would do a national competition, we would go into five cities every year and we

would stay in those cities for three years to put in place – we would require that they put

in place three programs. And then, our goal was that they would grow those dramatically

and that it would become self-sustaining. And so, at the beginning we worked with

preschool. Then we worked with –

WB: Those are local commitments to continue funding?

SD: Right. So, we would go in, and the process we used was to get at the highest

level, so we’d have the mayor and everybody involved, and then we’d go at the very

lowest level. We’d make sure those programs were absolutely stellar as good as they

could be, so that we would get the results that we needed and be able to talk about them

and support them.

And, of those programs now – we’ve been in fifty-eight cities, I think, that we still

are connected with. And their [Toyota’s] long-term thinking – they give us money to

stay connected with them over time, even after their money is gone, so we have some

money to bring them back to conference and to work with them. So, of those, ninety

percent are still there, and they haven’t received – some of them haven’t received funding

since 1993. But they’re all still there and they’ve expanded into statewide initiatives,

they – so then we moved from there into the Hispanic world about four or five years ago.


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WB: Actually more – 2003, you said.

SD: Yeah. The other thing about Toyota was they loaned us executives to come

in and teach us management processes and problem-solving systems.

WB: Wow!

SD: And we actually got to send people to their plant, to the shop floor to learn

their problem-solving system, and they came back and helped us implement it. They

helped us with appraisal systems, they taught us their worldwide problem-solving system

so that we knew how to ask the right questions and continue to ask those questions until

we got to the root cause. They were just amazing partners. Somebody needs to tell that

story, because that’s – you know.

WB: Who would do that?

SD: I don’t know. I mean, I keep thinking the Journal of Philanthropy or the

Chronicle of Philanthropy, or somebody needs to – I mean, this is not an ordinary

corporation. I mean, they’ve been there twenty years and they’ve done this.

But I had to go, finally, to Japan after this long process. You know, they said,

“We are not able to explain this to Dr. Toyota very well, and so he wants you to come

and explain it to the trustees and to him, so that he can ask you questions.”

WB: Explain a word that doesn’t exist in a language?

SD: Right. So, I had to explain the program. I had never been out of the country,

had no idea what I was doing. And I was meeting with Shin Goto. We’d worked on this

presentation. You know, they – and for him, he’s out of the New York office, he was the

one who was bringing it forward, so I was more worried about him and his job than I was

about getting the money.


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WB: He might have been, too.

SD: Whew! Boy, it was a really tense situation. And we practiced and practiced,

and you’d have to cut like seconds off of it. You know, it had to be just exact and

precise.

WB: How much time were you given?

SD: I had half an hour, which was a long presentation, and it was a slide – you

know, we didn’t have PowerPoint then – it was slides. And so, I met up with him in the

New York airport, and it was a Japan airlines thing. And I thought I knew him, and I

looked around, and everybody looked the same to me which is just – you know. It’s like,

“Oh, my gosh, I don’t know if that’s Shin Goto or not.” [Laughter]

So, we went there, and I had to go to like five different places in Japan to present,

and we spent –

WB: The same presentation essentially?

SD: Uh-huh. We spent the weekend in Kyoto, so we had a little vacation

together. And it was really an interesting experience for me, because being a woman,

5’10” tall, and Dr. Toyota is not tall, and so I stuck out, I guess is what I’m saying. They

were gracious hosts, but you know, I was coached to speak in short sentences because of

the interpreters, to be passionate about what I was saying –

WB: That was the easiest part.

SD: Right. But to realize that they would not be really acknowledging me, I

mean they’d be looking down.

WB: It would be hard to read the audience.

SD: Yes, it’s not going to be the kind of thing you’re used to.


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WB: Why five different presentations?

SD: Because there were different entities within Toyota, so the trustees – I met

with Dr. Toyota and some of them in Tokyo and then some in Toyota City – you know,

so there were different entities. And I think they were all on the board, but they weren’t

having a formal board meeting, so I had to go and kind of meet with all of them.

WB: So, you went to them?

SD: Yeah. And it was – the thing that was hardest for me is that they don’t

debrief afterwards. You know, I’m so used to –

WB: How did I do?

SD: Yeah. How did it go? And what do you think? And what about that

question?

WB: Inscrutable, I hear you saying.

SD: Nothing. Absolutely nothing, you know. You just packed up your stuff and

left.

WB: So, you came home, and how long did it take before they were in touch?

SD: It didn’t take long at all. I mean, it was just a matter of weeks. And I think

they had pretty much made the decision, but it’s a very personal thing to them. And Dr.

Toyota and I are great friends now, and I just think so highly of him. And he – the last

time I saw him he had made a fan, a Japanese fan, and he hand-calligraphied it for me.

And so, we’ve become friends. And so, it’s been, I guess, all the way along just a

marvelous experience.

And what I learned from the Kenan Trust, the mistake that I made, was giving

people a grant that was the same for the three years and not integrating it well enough


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into what was already going on. So, at the end of three years, they’d say, “Well, we don’t

have a program anymore because the Kenan money is gone.” You know, so I never

really learned about what I needed to do for sustainability. And that was a lesson that I

took with me when we started the Toyota program because I needed to do something

different.

WB: They taught you that. So, one of your mentors, in effect, was Toyota.

SD: Right. And I went to Frank Kenan and said, “I’d really like for you to give

me some money for an endowment,” you know, to think about – because it’s hard to keep

attracting funders if they don’t know you’re going to be in business. So, he said that that

would be fine and that every year that I raised a million dollars, he would give me five

hundred thousand dollars. And it had to be in the bank by June 30, no pledges, no

anything like that.

And so, we were off and running on that, which was the hardest thing I’ve ever

done because, I mean, I don’t have alumni I don’t – and to ask people for money to put

in the bank was just totally foreign to me because I wanted money to start programs. So,

it was hard money.

But Toyota came up again, and at the end of that said– I remember Jim Sakaguchi

saying, “Okay, so what is the biggest thing you need right now?” And I said, “I need to

raise this endowment money.” And he said, “Okay. We’ll help you with that, but what

we want is the interest from our money to be used for continuing a partnership with all of

these cities that we will no longer fund.” So, that’s kind of where that went.

WB: Fair enough.


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SD: So. But it was a – you know, Toyota has just been an incredible, incredible

partner.

WB: And Toyota came to you, right?

SD: Um-hmm.

WB: Bill Bennett and Bill Friday came to you, but you just said you went to

Frank Kenan. So –

SD: Well –

WB: It’s now a changing – it’s evolving.

SD: Yeah.

WB: In the sense that you now know what you need and what you have to do,

and so you’re able to reach out rather than expect something to come in on you.

SD: Right. I mean, it was so – I was so scared to even ask somebody like Frank

Kenan for an endowment. I thought, “Wow, that’s pretty bold to think about that.” But I

think in one of the board meetings I had heard something about an endowment they had

done for somebody and I thought, “Well, there’s an idea. I’ll get an endowment,”

[laughs] so, I –

WB: No more background than that?

SD: No. And I think I ran it by maybe the attorney first, and he said, “Yeah.

Yeah, that might be doable.” So, I don’t know. I don’t think I – I guess I’m not very

planful. Nothing’s ever been planned.

WB: You have funding from a wide range of sources: local, city, state, national,

international, and the like. Are there any untapped sources out there – generic untapped?


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SD: Not generic, I don’t think. I mean, I was just in a meeting – I’m on the

UNESCO board, the National Commission for UNESCO. And I was just with a woman

yesterday who is with the Environmental Protection Agency, and I found out that they

have money. They have grants that they give out for education. I thought, “Well, wow, I

never thought about EPA.” I’m on it now. [Laughs]

But our job has become different. I mean, in the beginning we were growing

pretty fast at the organization. And that’s not where I want to be. You know, I don’t

want to be in the business of getting big and running programs. My goal is to get

something embedded in the community where they just say, “Wow!” You know, “We’re

going to do this.”

I just came from Springdale, Arkansas, and I’m telling you they are on fire. We

started a program there two years ago in three elementary schools. Well, now they’re in

every elementary school. They’re going to middle school. They’ve got – I went to this

end-of-the-year celebration where these moms – there were a hundred moms in there that

were – and some dads – but just dressed to the nines, and they got to walk across the

stage. And their children were there, and it was just so meaningful.

WB: Such a proud moment for them.

SD: And they are so appreciative of what they’re learning. And the

superintendent will tell you, “It’s transformed our schools. You know, it’s just

transformed our schools. I never thought it could happen.”

WB: Have you ever thought of money from medical sources? Health literacy is

another form of literacy that is crucial in this day and age of pills.


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SD: We do some health literacy. We actually have a grant from Humana,

because they’re in our backyard, and we’re working with them on health literacy work.

But I think we do need to tap into it more. I keep looking at everything that we’re doing

in the country, like Michelle Obama’s thing with nutrition. It’s very important to do that

with children, but you know, if you don’t do it inter-generationally, and if you don’t work

with the parents that we serve, it’s not going to happen.

WB: And indeed, that’s why I asked about health literacy, health literacy for both

generations at the same time.

SD: Yeah. Everything that we do – I mean, we can’t just pretend we can do it

with this next generation if we don’t do it with their parents, because it’s – and that’s

where I’m trying to work with the environment here, too. I’m trying to figure out what

to do on that, because I think the families that we serve are the least likely to be aware of

their impact on the environment, or what they could do to do something different. And

so, I’m trying to figure out what’s the intergenerational connect.

So, our job is to create new – we’re doing a lot of intergenerational financial

literacy at a very basic level, not the stuff that the banks do but the [basics], you know.

So, our job is to create new opportunities. We’re just coming out with something that

I’m excited about that helps Hispanic parents learn about higher education, community

colleges, but at a very basic level, and what they can do to help their children. So, it’s, I

think, going to be really important to the country.

WB: Why was there a need to create a Hispanic Family Institute, and the process

by which you decided, “Yeah, I need to do this, I need to separate it out, I need to have it

as an independent entity,” and what it’s trying to accomplish that might be different?


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SD: Well, it really was – I mean, really, I was just astounded at the statistics first

of all, about what’s going on in our country with how many Hispanic families are here.

But their level of education when they come to this country it being so low, and then the

fact that fifty-eight percent of their children are dropping out of high school, I mean, they

never make it. And so, and their having 3.2 children each, and everybody else is having

1.8, and so, you think, “My gosh, if we don’t do something –.” And so, the more I started

looking at it and reading about it and thinking about it, and at the same time our programs

were getting flooded with Hispanic parents. So they were begging for help. You know,

we don’t know what to do. We don’t know how to serve them. We don’t – you know.

WB: Um-hmm.

SD: So, all of that kind of converged, I guess, together to say we really need to

step back and say, “What can we do that can make a difference?” You know, because

we’d go to places like Atlanta, and they were talking about all the gangs now with

Hispanic kids. And, “What happened to them?” You know, “Their parents came over

here. They were hard workers.” Well, what happened to them was we never taught their

parents anything that was going to help them remain a parent. So all of that strong family

started to dissipate because they didn’t know the language, and all of a sudden the child is

the interpreter for them, and the role reversal was huge.

So, we stepped back to say, “Okay, where can we find really great people who

really understand Hispanic learning?” And not retrofit them into the model that we have

but try to think what we would do to appeal to their culture and be culturally sensitive to

them. And we had so much experience with Indians and native Hawaiians and others that

it wasn’t something that was altogether different for us. But we really wanted to make


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sure that we had resources in Spanish. That we looked at the culture and figured out what

they needed.

For example, it’s not good for them to go to schools in Mexico. I mean, parents

just should never go and ask a teacher anything. I mean, that’s just disrespectful. And

there are no such things as middle schools in Mexico. And all of these things that just –

and here they are, plopped down with two or three years of education in their own

country, trying to help their children succeed. And so, what could we do to make sure

that the schools understood, too that this was part of their mission? I mean, this is

something they couldn’t ignore. I mean, they had to do it and they had to reach out to

parents in a new way. And this was a real challenge.

WB: And a challenge for those mothers, especially, that are involved. One

mother told me in one of these programs that, “My son comes home every day and tells

me how stupid I am.”

SD: Yeah. And that happens. You know, “Mom can’t read, and it’s this broken

English when she talks,” and they’re ashamed.

WB: She’s a very bright woman, too.

SD: I know, but they’re growing away. And you just watch it happening and you

think, “Haven’t we learned anything?” I mean, haven’t we learned anything in our

history about what we did with the African American family, what we’ve done with the

Native American family? You know, can’t we now think, “My gosh, these people are

here. They have a strong sense of family. They have a good work ethic. They have a

real strong sense of religion and commitment to that.” You know, can’t we take


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advantage of that for a change? And use it; instead of looking ten years from now or the

next generation, saying, “Well, I wonder what happened.”

WB: Have you gotten the same kind of local, regional, national support for the

Hispanic Family Program?

SD: You know, we have. And in some ways it’s interesting, because – you’ll

kind of appreciate this being in the literacy world, too – in some ways people would

rather give you money to teach somebody English than they would for somebody who’s

already had their chance, so to speak, going through our school system.

WB: Hmm.

SD: And it’s kind of an interesting – but there is a lot of backlash now about

spending money on Hispanics because they’re here and that keeps growing.

WB: Documentation and lack of?

SD: Yeah. And they get so scared when some of that stuff starts happening, and

they’re afraid to come to class because they’re afraid that they’re going to get arrested or

something’s going to happen to them. And this year we had – at our conference we have

student speakers at each one of our general sessions and so we look around the country.

And two of them that were supposed to come backed out because they were afraid. They

were going to have to drive and have somebody else drive because they don’t have a

driver’s license. But they were afraid to come across some of the state lines and the fact

that going through Arizona or something they might get stopped. And so there’s a great

deal of fear out there. And people do ask us, they’ll say, “Well, are these documented?”

You know, “Are these legal?” And so –

WB: You don’t care.


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SD: We always say, “They’re the parents of America’s school children. If we’re

going to help the school children, we have to help the parents.”

WB: We, here, have found some differences. For example, we find Hispanic

parents are hardly interested in GEDs. They’re interested in life skills.

SD: Right.

WB: And have you found that or other similar kinds of situations that would

differentiate from the traditional family literacy GED kind?

SD: Yeah. Well, there’s no pipeline for them, really, because you can talk about

getting a GED, but what’s that going to do for them? I mean, if they’re not documented,

they’re not going on to school. They’ll never have money to. So, they really do – and I

think they’re focused on wanting to know the practical things that they can do. And we

have all kinds of people come and speak to them about resources. But we’ve developed

materials to teach them English in the context of what their children need to know in

school.

WB: Yes. So do we.

SD: So, it’s a very intensive – I mean, the parents actually are sitting in a second

grade classroom, for example, with their child, side-by-side with the teacher, and then

they understand what the American schooling system is, what their children are supposed

to learn, but they’re participating. I mean, if it’s a spelling game or something, they’re in

it just as the child would be.

WB: And I assume you have conversations about health, like, “My child is sick.

Is there homework that needs to be done?” Making a telephone call to the teacher, and so

on and so forth – these kind of basic exercises?


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SD: Sure. So, that’s the parent time. That’s kind of like the fourth component of

the program is how do you navigate all this? But they – when I was at this Springdale

event recently, I think they had fifteen perfect attenders for the year, which was amazing

for these parents because there are so many things. And one of the mothers – it was

getting toward the end of the year, and she didn’t want to miss, and so she made her

husband baby-sit [her sick child] while she came. So, the child wasn’t even in the school,

but she came. [Laughs]

WB: Are there new geographical areas? You’re going into what – eighteen

countries? How many countries?

SD: Twenty countries. But actually they have just learned from us and taken

what we do. And I always think it would be funny – UNESCO kind of pulled us all

together. And so, they’ve taken – sometimes they send people over. New Zealand spent

two summers with us sent a whole cadre of people. The Canada people –

WB: Um-hmm. So, you really don’t have responsibility for them?

SD: No. And I – you know, as much as we’ve thought about doing international

work and have been kind of pulled there, it’s just not something that I think we ought to

do right now. You know?

WB: Well, in Afghanistan where the illiteracy level is ninety percent –

SD: Yeah.

WB: It’s awfully hard to see how progress can be made.

SD: It is. And they’ve taken what we have done, some of those countries – South

Africa has done just a wonderful job. They have much more teacher training than we

ever dreamed about having. And Uganda was talking about it, [and] Malta. They’ve


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made it their own, and yet we can learn a lot from them. So, there was something called

a North-South Exchange on Family Literacy, which UNESCO sponsored in Germany,

and it was just fascinating.

And I always thought about Frank Kenan. He’d get such a kick out of the broken

English and they’re talking about the Kenan model. And I just thought he’d –that would

bring a smile to his face.

WB: Volunteers – recruiting them, training them, monitoring them, satisfying

them, encouraging them onward – how, over time, have you figured out how to get the

perfect volunteer?

SD: You know, we have not done as much with volunteers as a national

organization. In the very beginnings of this program, there were lots of volunteers that

we trained and trained them well, I think, right alongside teachers. And we had job

descriptions and we had evaluations and we had – you know, tried to encourage people

not to –

WB: Appreciation.

SD: Yeah, um-hmm. Not to just place them with the lowest level learners.

WB: So, this might be a weak link?

SD: It could be, because I think we could activate a whole network of volunteers

that we don’t currently have. It gets a little bit stickier when you’re doing it in schools,

and that’s where we kind of moved away from the preschool model into the in-school

model, because of the background checks. And once you start kind of opening that up, I

always fear that they’re going to look to our parents. And some of our parents who are in


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the school probably do have felony convictions, and they’re not allowed to be in the

schools. And so, it’s –

WB: Hmm.

SD: It gets just a little bit harder when you have volunteers going into somebody

else’s school building, as opposed to the parents. And so, it’s – we do have volunteers,

but they’re volunteers that are recruited and managed locally.

WB: Okay. But this might be a bad telephone call that someone would make.

SD: Right.

WB: Some parent came in with a gun.

SD: Yeah. That could be. I mean, it’s –

WB: Are there times when you feel that you haven’t succeeded at something as

much as you would like, or maybe even some failures that you can look back on and

regret?

SD: Absolutely. I mean, I think – you know, it’s been hard. The growth was so

rapid, and trying to ensure quality in all of that growth was really difficult. And I think

the one thing that’s always difficult is the federal government, when they take something

on. [WB laughs] I mean, really, I don’t think I ever realized, but you know, they – when

they take something – they had the Even Start legislation, and that was just kind of our

main thing. And they – to them, training is having a conference, and you go and have an

hour of training here and an hour of training there. They don’t close down bad programs.

Politically, it’s not that great to do. It’s hard to do, so they don’t. They don’t have

money to go and travel and see the programs. And they continually rely on what I call –

I’m sure that’s not a very kind term, but the Beltway Bandits the ones that are the big


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entities that just live on federal dollars. And they really don’t have the passion for the

work. You know, they might have some –

WB: They have passion for the money.

SD: Right, and so they might do some things. You know, if it’s reading, they’ll

do something and they’ll bring in some experts on reading, but it’s not –

WB: They’ll do anything you want.

SD: [Laughs] Yeah. So, whatever the –

WB: For money.

SD: Du jour, yeah. So, that was a difficult thing for me. And I still don’t know

how you grow something and institutionalize it if you don’t have the federal dollars for it.

You know, we took a very large, fifteen-million-dollar Head Start grant just because we

wanted to get inside the system and train in family literacy. But at the end of the day, I

mean, it changed our organization so dramatically because it was so –

WB: How so?

SD: It was so compliance-driven and so – we had a cooperative agreement, so it

could be changed at the drop of a hat. So, it might become something else. So, it wasn’t

– the federal government doesn’t really rely on expertise as much as it wants its ideas

embedded in something, and they may change. I don’t know if that describes it very

well.

WB: Did you ever have problems in Kentucky with political appointees or others

that wanted to drive your program in ways you resisted?

SD: Yes. I mean, certainly, that’s always there.


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WB: In spite of the fact that you’ve got a [ ] program, [laughs] we want people

to read.

SD: Yeah. I think what happens is that if there’s an initiative on early childhood,

for example, that somebody wants to push, then they will redirect this money to support

the early childhood and leave the parent out of the mix, you know. So, it’s more like that.

It’s like whatever train is moving, “Oh, gee, here’s a pot of money over here maybe we

could use.” And so, it gets kind of batted around.

The other real challenge with this is that it doesn’t fit anywhere, because it’s an

Adult Ed program and it’s a child’s program. So, in a bureaucracy, even at the federal

level, it’s very difficult. So, if you put it over with the children’s education, they see

parents in a whole different way, and they don’t see parents as learners that they need

learning. And if you put it with adults, it’s just kind of messy to them to always have to

connect with children’s programs.

WB: Is that ever going to be overcome, that disconnect?

SD: I don’t know. I mean, we tried to do it with the Even Start legislation, but

still it ended up over in early childhood education with Reading First.

WB: So that’s a goal, perhaps, for you?

SD: It is a goal, and it’s the –

WB: Make sense out of government.

SD: It’s the same in the state. It gets a little easier at the local level the district

level, because it’s not quite as many layers and people can work together more easily.

WB: And they can see the two really are together.


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SD: Yeah. But it’s – that’s a real challenge with this, you know. And then, when

the Bush administration was in, George W’s administration, they were so focused on just

K-3 reading, and they didn’t want anything else under the tent. We worked hard to make

sure in the other legislation that family literacy was required. So we were sailing. And

then they came in, and No Child Left Behind changed all that. And they didn’t like this

program because it was too messy to evaluate well. It was – they called it a “waterfront

program.” You know, “Well, how do you ever evaluate all of this stuff and how it works

together?” You know?

WB: But obviously you had over many years for many grantors.

SD: Right. But they didn’t take that seriously enough. So, I mean, they didn’t –

if it didn’t appear in a refereed journal and it wasn’t Gold Standard research with a pure

experimental design, it was not valid in their eyes. And the pure –

WB: You might need to hire a researcher.

SD: We have a researcher, but you know, to try to do a pure experimental design

with this kind of a program, you have to deny people services. You have to recruit them

and then put them on a waiting list and tell them they’ll get in, or you know, they’ll

assume they will, but they can never get in.

WB: Do schools of education ever come on your horizon as places where there

ought to be academics that could do independent research?

SD: You know, that’s – I guess when you talk about the challenges, that’s been

one of my biggest challenges. Andy Hayes has worked with us. But it’s just a huge

challenge to try to get – I mean, it’s the same thing in a research institution. There’s

people who are going to research in sociology, or there’s somebody who’s going to


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research in this or research in that. But this is a multi-discipline program, and it’s not

something that’s going to get you on a tenure-track, because if you’re in one discipline or

another, then that’s the research you need to do, because that’s what’s going to keep you

there.

WB: That’s where you’re going to be held responsible.

SD: Right. So, if you get diverted into something like this – I mean, we’ve had

some people at Florida State that are really – I mean, they help us a lot. They’re good

statisticians, and we work with a lot of researchers, but they just want to research one

slice of it, which is not what you need. I mean, you want to know the long-term effects

of all this interaction. And so, it’s really difficult to do that.

WB: Where will you expect to find the kinds of people that you actually need?

SD: I don’t know.

WB: Schools of education don’t produce them, I take it.

SD: Right. I mean, we’ve tried – I mean, Don Stedman here at the University

was very helpful to me, and Barbara Wasik we’ve worked with, and you know, there are

people that have come along. We’ve tried to even hire a researcher that would have a

joint appointment with the University of North Carolina, so that we could get people who

wouldn’t have to leave their tenure track and actually could come and help us. And we

just never seem to be able to get it. You know, we just never seem to be able to get the

kind of research or the kind of researchers that we need. And that’s been, and probably

to this day will be, the biggest challenge. And we still have great evaluation data and we

gather all kinds of things and we have records on thirty thousand families that we have all

kinds of –


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WB: But nobody wants to play with them?

SD: No. It’s just –

WB: Have you actually gone to deans of schools of education and tried to talk

them into realizing this as an issue that ought to be one of interest to them?

SD: No. I mean, I’ve tried –

WB: Bill Friday might be the person to ask.

SD: Yeah.

WB: When are schools of education going to produce scholars that can

appreciate these kinds of issues and study them?

SD: Yeah. I mean, it’s so rich to study, I mean, especially the Hispanic program.

I mean, nobody knows what to do there. These children – are they acquiring language

faster in these programs because their parents are there? What’s happening at home?

How is that going to influence the dropout situation? I mean, there are just so many

things that we don’t know anything about.

WB: Just before dessert today, throw that one toward him.

SD: Because that’s a huge need for us. I went to Russ Whitehurst when he was

there chairing IES and he – you know, I knew all these people pretty well. And we

actually were funded by the U.S. Department of Education to synthesize and do a meta-

analysis of all the early childhood research on what’s going to create readers, you know.

And so, we’ve worked with all the best researchers for a number of years, but just can’t

seem to get the traction that we need. So, I went to Russ trying to get the money. And he

said, “You know, you’re not going to get a university interested in this. You know,

you’re going to have to go with one of the Beltway Bandits to do this.” And so –


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WB: Which is a guarantee of failure.

SD: Yeah, I know.

WB: Because you’ll spend a lot of money, but you’ll get the answers that they

think you want.

SD: Right. And it’s just ridiculous. So, anyway, I – so that’s – that, I would say,

is a huge challenge. I think the scale-up – you know, we’ve done a good job in scaling

up, but at times the quality of the scale-up –

WB: It’s beyond your control now.

SD: Yeah, it is.

WB: But certain things are potentially within your control. What do you see as

your continuing, challenging goal for you, things you can hope to control or direct or

guide?

SD: I think on two fronts: one is policy. You know, we have to keep in there. I

mean, if we’re going to keep all of this going and keep it alive, we’ve got to make sure

that legislation and Congress supports this, because federal money is huge for poverty,

and that’s where we need to keep working. You know, how do we get Congress to

include this? And how do we work with the administration, when a new administration

comes in, to help them see this as integral to what they’re trying to accomplish? So,

we’re – I think that world – we still have a lot of work to do and we have to be –

WB: So, you accept the need to be political.

SD: Yeah. We have to stay there. We have to stay there as much as we can.

We’ve got a lot of legislation going through right now. It’s hard to make it happen.

Everybody is in there with their hand out and their best thoughts. And trying to make it


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not a tired “gee, we did that in the last administration,” or “gee, we already did that,” you

know. Trying to put a new dress on it so that it has some sizzle again and – you know.

It’s one thing when you first start. You know, it’s the sexiest thing that ever came along.

But as it moves along, it wasn’t somebody’s idea. It was the past idea.

WB: They can’t claim it for their idea.

SD: Right.

WB: So therefore it’s not as interesting.

SD: Yeah.

WB: Okay.

SD: So you have to keep figuring out how you connect with wherever the train’s

moving.

WB: Okay. So, you can never get away from Washington?

SD: Right. And then the other thing is working on quality, making sure that the

services that we’re providing out there are just the top-of-the-line services, you know.

It’s –

WB: Would you focus equally on the Hispanic and the old standby, or do you

need to put more time in one?

SD: I think we’re doing a good job with Hispanic and I think we’re really making

some headway and I think we need to stay with it.

WB: You found good people?

SD: Yeah. But then I think beyond that, I mean, one of the fears I have is in the

adult education programs and elsewhere, they’re filled with Hispanic or other immigrant

families. And that’s wonderful because they want to learn and they’re here to learn and


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they want a better life. But we’ve not – we’ve abandoned the other folks that we have to

work so hard to recruit, you know. In the beginning of this program and in any Adult Ed

program, when you try to recruit African American males or African American women,

or you try to recruit some rural poverty folks, it’s a lot more difficult and challenging,

and you have to do a lot more to retain those folks. So, I think when we look at that

maybe we need to circle back around and start thinking about what we do now with the

African American community.

WB: Have you ever heard or found or thought there was a possibility that the

African American community feels left out, behind, ignored, with new problems, as

Hispanic issues coming in?

SD: Absolutely, because that’s all you talk about, you know. And sometimes

when we go into a place like Detroit, and you sit around a table with all those

administrators in the school, they’re all African American. And you’re saying, “Well,

gee, I’m coming to bring you money for Hispanics,” and they’re looking at you like, “I

don’t know about that.” [WB laughs] But they’ve taken off with it, and a foundation

came along and decided – the Skillman Foundation decided to take it to all the African

American communities, and they’re just doing great with it. And in New York –

WB: But they had the imprimatur of that particular institution behind them,

which is remarkable.

SD: Right. Yeah. So I think – you know, you always are thinking about what it

is you need to model next because it’s not our business to be in it forever. We need to

make it work, model it, get some training and resources into it. We’re doing a lot more

online now a lot more training and technical assistance. And obviously everybody is.


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But I think there’s a role for maybe reaching directly to families now that we’ve not had

before, because there is the technology. And even though they’re in poverty, many of

them have computers or have access to computers in the library. So, can we get people

where they are? You know, can we use mobile phone technology? Can we use some of

the ways that people are communicating now to offer just-in-time lessons?

I mean, one of the things I got excited talking to the Sesame people about was –

you know, they were doing a cell phone study that Elmo would call a three- or four-year-

old child every day with the word of the day. So, they were trying to see – and then they

had things for Mom on the cell phone. You know, so can we think about taking that and

maybe not going through intermediaries, but trying to ratchet it up so that we’re reaching

families directly?

WB: It’s one-on-one in those cases, in very many cases, but the problem is there,

and that’s likely the direction, because libraries are shutting down in these fiscal hard

times.

SD: Um-hmm.

WB: And when libraries – you’re absolutely right. Libraries are handy for

people who don’t have PCs.

SD: Right. But if you could figure out how to reach more people directly, I

mean, maybe it wouldn’t be as intensive, but it would be some way to –

WB: But it would be personal.

SD: Yeah, and so that’s kind of a challenge for us right now.

WB: Tell me something about Room for Reading, because I confess I’m ignorant

there.


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SD: Room for Reading?

WB: Rooms for Reading, yep. The next program, Rooms for Reading, you said.

At the outset you said there’s this kind of program, these kinds of new things coming

online.

SD: Oh. No, I think that was more – I was talking more about what we’re doing

with Better World Books, that Rooms for Reading is their international partner.

WB: Oh, okay, I see.

SD: So, I think – you know, I think we need to – it’s difficult to get funding right

now. You know, that’s another big challenge that we have. It’s just really – and

everybody knows that it’s dried up. I mean, the foundations don’t have the money either.

Gates is investing a lot of money, but it’s difficult to tap into what they’re doing.

You know, they’re working on high schools mostly. And they’re doing some other

things, but it’s – it seems like everybody I know who goes to the Gates Foundation

disappears from the earth, you know. [WB laughs] You never see them again. I don’t

know what they do out there.

So, trying to convince people that this is an innovation in the way we change

schools. There’s a lot of emphasis on the Promise Neighborhoods now, and I think that

we’re a part of that. So, it’s – what do we do in health literacy or financial literacy? How

do we reach this inter-generationally? And how do we keep talking about it?

I’m working with the National Governors Association now on standards, because

standards are a big thing. And every state’s going to have – they’re trying to push

national standards. And I don’t disagree with that. I think it would be wonderful if we

could have national standards. I mean, right now you have some place like Mississippi,


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who has very low standards, and ninety percent of the people might make them. In

Massachusetts sixty percent don’t, but their standards [are rigorous] so we really need to

come together on it.

But we’re going to leave out the parent piece and so, I’m trying to talk to the

National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers about

building from the very beginning a parent piece for this. You know, what do parents

need to know about what their children are expected to learn, what standards are in the

second grade, for example, and how could they help them at the kitchen table? You

know, what can we do to drive this into the family so that we get the support that we

need, not just convince them that we need standards?

So, I think I’m making some headway, and hopefully we can get some money to

attach onto that so that we can become the parent partner for this, so that we can help

parents, the most disadvantaged parents, learn what they can do to help.

WB: Let me stand back and ask: Are there other Bill Fridays out there? Are

there other Sharon Darlings out there? Are there other people who are going to cultivate,

as he has helped you? Are there other people like you, or is there a generation of Bill

Fridays coming along that is going to find a new generation of Sharon Darlings?

SD: You know, I would love to think that, but I just have never met anybody like

Bill Friday. Never, in all of my travels or work I’ve done or opportunities to be with so

many other people, I’ve just never met somebody like Bill Friday. He’s just a marvelous

human being.

WB: And his linking with the Kenan Charitable Trust at that time was almost

crucial.


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SD: Yeah, it absolutely was. And he helped the Kenan Trust, I think, move to

something else. I mean, they were really kind of stuck, and I think funding some private

schools and things like that. And he really saw it as an opportunity to make a difference,

and – you know, so he really revolutionized, I think, their thinking at the Kenan Trust.

WB: Well, they had already worked at university fellowships, endowed chairs,

that level, and they were looking for a new idea when he came onboard, and this was his

new idea.

SD: Yeah, but he’s just – I mean, I don’t think – I mean, when I come to North

Carolina and I turn on television, and there I see Bill Friday interviewing somebody, but

really you know he really wants to know it. You know? I mean, he’s just – he wants to

help, and he’s just a marvelous statesman. I mean, that’s what I think I’m really most

perplexed about in the country right now is that we just don’t seem to have statesmen

who really want to put public service ahead of self who really are willing to do that. And

you just – I don’t know where they are. I want them to step up. You know, I want to

find other people that are like that.

WB: Are there other people like yourself?

SD: There are a lot of people, I think. You know, I meet a lot of people in these

programs. You know, like I just met a teacher last week who just – my gosh, this woman

is just incredible. She just – she could go and take an idea and really change the

trajectory of things if she got hold of some money. And she has a lot of spark and ideas.

WB: So, if I can try to generalize, you don’t see some grandfathers having the

broad vision, good listeners, and acting on them the way you see Bill Friday, but you do


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see a lot of energetic people who could do a lot of things if they had the right

circumstances?

SD: Absolutely. I mean, because I think about – I had an idea and I had a

passion for it, but it wouldn’t have been anything if Bill Friday hadn’t come along. I

mean, it would have been just lackluster. I mean, I would have hung on in the General

Assembly in Kentucky, but probably not forever, you know.

WB: But you already had federal funding at that time.

SD: Well, we had the – I had federal funding to do the national dissemination of

adult literacy, but not the family literacy. So I think [pause] he’s the one who really

deserves the credit. And still he’s just the most generous man and he’s helped me so

much.

WB: Are there other ways in which you can say he has, I mean, just stiffening

your spine at some time or thanking you at some time? Or are there still other ways?

SD: Just his constant support and mentoring, you know. “Have you thought

about this?” And, “I think this might be good,” you know. And, “I really want you to

meet these people because they’re really influential.” And every time he had an

opportunity to bring me into conversations with people who knew a lot of different things

or people who were potential funders, he always did that. And he made sure when they

had the Kenan Scholars meeting, for example, that I had an opportunity to come there

and meet with those folks. So, he helped me get an education that I wouldn’t have gotten

otherwise, and he also made it possible to nominate me for some awards that I received,

which made a huge difference in the visibility of family literacy and a huge difference in

being able to attract money.


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WB: Were there other local mentors who were doing some of the same things? I

assume there were.

SD: There were. You know, I had a very good local mentor who was the

president of the bank, Mike Harreld, and he was always there for me, and I could always

go and count on him. But because I was so national and because I was always traveling

somewhere else, it was difficult.

Walter Anderson, who was the publisher of Parade magazine, was a dear friend,

and I could always sit and – you know, we’d sit in his office in Manhattan and talk for

hours until it got very dark. And he was always there for me and helping me and giving

me advice. And there were people – there were always people along the way, and I like

to think that one of the things that I did well was listen and try to hear what they were

saying to me. Sometimes they used a different language.

WB: But what you’re saying is that Bill Friday listened to you very well.

SD: He listened to me, yeah, and he was always so proud of what was

accomplished. I mean, I felt – I felt proud that he was proud and I wanted to make him

proud. You know, I wanted him to really feel like he was getting everything that he

wanted out of this program because he was so instrumental in it.

WB: Did he ever explain to you where he came from to acquire those qualities

that you admire so much?

SD: No, I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve read everything I can read about Bill

Friday, but I just – he just has a way of caring about everybody, and that’s rare, I mean,

to be able to bring it out in people.

WB: Yes. Are there any other things you would like to say, to add?


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SD: Gosh, I hope – I really hope this will be informative for somebody. I feel

like it’s an opportunity for me, so thank you for that.

WB: Well, thank you very much, Sharon.

SD: Thank you.

END OF INTERVIEW

Sally Council

July 2, 2010


Documents

Interviewee: Sharon Darling