History
The Christian County Association for Specific-Perceptual Motor Disability was organized by parents and others interested in leaning disabilities in 1970 and received its charter from the State of Kentucky at that time. A family with a dyslexic child moved to Hopkinsville. Realizing there was no help for their child in this area, the family worked with the Robert Stites family, who also had a child with dyslexia, and St. Peter and Paul PTO to bring the late Dr. Charles L. Shedd to Hopkinsville. Following his talk to about 200 people at First United Methodist Church, the Association was formed. Ruth Fuller Lature, a local educator interested in reading disabilities, was invited to work in Dr. Shedd’s summer program at Berea College to learn a multisensory method of teaching persons with dyslexia.
History as told by Ruth Fuller Lature
at
the 30th Anniversary of the Association
Come back with me in time to the fall of 1969. A PTO meeting is in progress at St. Peter and Paul School. The Goodwin family has just moved here from Louisville. They are expressing their frustration over having to take their dyslexic son out of a wonderful program in Louisville and finding no help in Hopkinsville. As the Goodwins describe their child, another family is listening intently. Mr. and Mrs. Bob Stites recognize similar characteristics in their son. After having taken their son to specialist after specialist and receiving no satisfactory answer as to what is wrong with their child, much less what to do about his reading problem, the Stites begin to feel hope. Thus began the spark which launched years of helping dyslexics in this community.
While there has been tremendous community support, Bob Stites was the main spark who worked frantically to bring the late Dr. Charles L. Shedd to Hopkinsville in early 1970. In fact, Bob’s big spark had lit so many little ones that nearly 200 people came to hear Dr. Shedd.
Imagine my thrill at opening a letter inviting me to work for Dr. Shedd at Berea College during the summer of 1970 to learn his method. While I was away, the Christian County Association for Specific Perceptual Motor Disability was born.
Picture Bob Stites and I as we sit in Frank Yost’s living room asking for a contribution so we can have Dr. Shedd back to train our tutors. Our faces glow with surprised delight as Mr. Yost alone commits enough money to get our first program started with 23 students.
In a couple of years, we became an agency of United Way.
Picture my garage so filled with dyslexia materials that I cannot get my car in. In your mind, see Bob Koob coming into view and persevering until he gets us an office, a part time secretary, and the money to afford such luxuries. How many times have I said to Bob during his “think big moment”, I’ll believe it when I see it? And how many times, to my amazement and delight, I’ve had to say, “Now I believe it”? We must pay tribute to the sparks that directly touch our students the supervisors and tutors. We look around and see people like Mrs. Crawford, a teacher at HHS who can make more in one day of teaching than in an entire semester working for us. Mrs. Stephenson skips lunch on Mondays so she can come to work for us on time and has done so for years. Countless individuals and groups who have been big sparks.
Let's shift to the reason we are all involved-the people with the invisible reading handicap. Let me help you glimpse these real people as I flash a few pictures before your mind. Let’s go visit an engineer who was in our very first class. Let’s hop on that plane and ride abroad as a very successful teacher takes one of her students to international competition. Visualize the broad smile on the face of another former student as she thinks of soon receiving her Master’s Degree. Come see the computer technician as he fluently rattles off computer intricacies that are far beyond my comprehension. Feel with me the pain of 2 adults who are living their lives not being able to read, having to cover up, and always living in stress because of the fear of being found out. Their stories are something one only reads about in books, yet here are real, live, feeling, human beings pouring out their life-long secrets. One is doing well. One died suddenly of a heart attack a few days after finishing his first semester with us. We helped him die happy.
Imagine the Fort Campbell students who have come to us, one even a college graduate, with communication skills too poor to write home from the battlefields.
Step into the shoes of the child and his parents who have just been able to put a name to their child’s problem. They have found out that their child is not lazy, dumb, or just immature. They are no longer alone—there are other parents and children with the same invisible handicap. We have helped hundreds of bewildered parents and children find their way through screenings.
I can not tell you that every situation has had a happy ending. My greatest disappointment has been seeing parents unwilling to make the sacrifices to enroll their child in the tutorial program or keep him or her in the program long enough to make a real difference. I have been in the unique position of seeing these struggling, bewildered children berate themselves in the classroom, knowing some of them will never learn to read with any degree of success. I see what is and what can be. Yet I am helpless in getting the child and program to connect.