SYRACUSE, NY — Ruth Johnson Colvin, who founded Literacy Volunteers of America, was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and received the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, has died. She was 107.
Colvin died Sunday in Syracuse, New York, according to ProLiteracy, the nonprofit formed in 2002 by the merger of Literacy Volunteers and Laubach Literacy. She served on the organization’s board of directors until her death.
“We owe ProLiteracy’s existence not only to Ruth and her founding of Literacy Volunteers of America, but we are also guided by her innate understanding that literacy is a right,” an online tribute reads. “We are humbled to have learned from her for so long. Ruth eagerly shared her wisdom with the ProLiteracy staff and always encouraged us to continue our fight to improve adult literacy.”
Colvin, an avid reader herself, founded Literacy Volunteers in 1962 to speak out against illiteracy and teach people to read. The 1960 census showed that there were 11,000 illiterates in the Syracuse area, where she lived.
“In the ’50s, America didn’t know it had an illiteracy problem. We thought illiteracy was in India, Africa, China. Not in America,” she told The Associated Press before receiving the Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2006.
From its beginnings in Colvin’s basement, her organization expanded across the United States and to numerous other countries, where she trained volunteers in simple methods for teaching reading. Her work would take her and her husband, Bob Colvin, to dozens of countries. The two had been married for 73 years when Bob Colvin died in 2014.
Colvin was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1993, and received the President’s National Volunteer Action Award from President Ronald Reagan in 1987. She also wrote several books. One of them, “My Travels Through Life, Love and Literacy,” was a memoir published in 2020 when Colvin was 103.
“Sometimes you have to let go of certainty and move on to trust and faith and belief in your passions,” she wrote.
She kept hundreds of letters she received over the years from teachers, students and supporters, the ProLiteracy tribute said.
“Those letters,” it said, “represented her life’s work and proved that anyone can make a difference in the lives of others.”