Below, please find a story that supports our mission and reaffirms the reason why this work is important and changes people’s lives. During the course of this blog, Literacy Volunteers of Bangor will share these stories as they come available.  Please join us in celebrating their successes.

On April 22, 2004, Sally (not her real name) suffered from a stroke while working in a busy medical practice at the medical center. This single event changed Sally’s life. Prior to this date, Sally held a tremendous amount of administrative responsibilities working within this busy practice. Her job often kept her working a 60-70+ hour a week. While there, she worked with the resident interns, developed policies, answered hundreds of incoming calls each day, and worked directly with patients. She helped make that office run. Personally, she was married and had two teen daughters. Her stroke, though, changed her world; Sally was 39.

After several weeks of hospitalization, Sally learned that the stroke had left her with difficulty walking and unable to perform activities of daily living (e.g., fixing her hair, bathing, driving, etc.) In addition, she wasn’t able to recognize numbers, compute, OR read.

Sally came to LV-Bangor in the fall of 2005. At that time, she was reading at about the 4th grade reading level. Today, after working with dedicated tutors, Sally is reading at 12+ grade level. She has a LV-Bangor tutor who helps her with math and she is steadily improving her skills, learning multiplication tables and practicing writing out numbers (so that she can maintain her own check book).

Since June 2006, Sally has also volunteered within the LV-Bangor office. For more than a year, Sally has written policies to prepare LV-Bangor for accreditation in 2007. Many of us are extremely appreciative of her work since it takes a special skill set to do this type of detail-oriented research and work. In fact, policy development has unlocked a part of her brain that has flooded her memory with skills that she had previously. In addition to these efforts, Sally has coordinated a book club program for emerging readers and serves on the LV-Bangor board representing our student population.

Sally is completely committed to the importance of literacy in our communities. Everywhere she goes, she talks about LV-Bangor. And what we weren’t surprised to calculate is that she donates roughly 40 hours of volunteer time a week! Sally is just one story in hundreds. However, her story is one that epitomizes dedication and perseverance!