Sunday, May. 11, 2008

Modesto man takes guesswork out of his life by learning how to read

Walter Woodley worked for the city of Modesto for 33 years, rising to become the chief groundskeeper at John Thurman Field.

He oversaw the rebuilding of the playing surface during the stadium renovation in 1997. He spent a few weeks each spring at the major-league training camps in Arizona, learning trade secrets from other groundskeepers.

The secret to his success, however, couldn't possibly match the secret he kept from most of his co-workers and even his children for decades:

He could not read.

We're not talking about the inability to plod through Tolstoy's "War and Peace" or textbooks or quarterly stock reports. Nor are we talking about lacking the skills needed to scan newspapers, magazines or even comic books.

We're talking about a person who, at Earth Day festivities at Graceada Park in 2005, relied on his wife to read aloud the words on a sign in front of the Stanislaus Literacy Center's booth:

"If you can't read this, you need our help."

Yes, Woodley needed the center's help because he wanted nothing more in life than to read -- to read books, to read Scripture.

"I picked up a pamphlet, and I couldn't wait until that Monday to go sign up," Woodley said.

Now, after masking his deficiency for so many years, Woodley, 59, is willing to tell his story, to write it and read it, too.

He entered the Literacy Center's ReadingWorks program, working with tutor Marilyn Halferty. He now reads at an 11th-grade level, attaining a measure of skill, confidence and pride he had never thought possible.

His problem began in the 1960s as a 13-year-old living in El Centro, just 11 miles north of the Mexican border.

"We used to go to Mexico all the time to fish or whatever," Woodley said. But after one trip south of the border, he came down with a fever that wouldn't subside.

"They packed me in ice," he said.

The fever morphed into pneumonia and caused brain damage that affected his cognitive and physical skills.

"I had to learn to walk all over again," Woodley said. "I didn't know my friends anymore. I had to learn everything all over again."

When he returned to school, as a seventh-grader, officials placed him in special education classes. The illness left him unable to relate sounds to the written word.

"It was extremely hard," he said.

His father moved the family to Modesto when Woodley was 16, and he took a couple of classes at Modesto Junior College.

"I did OK in math, but not the reading," he said. "They didn't teach phonics. I thought I'd better get a job because I wasn't going to make it in school."

He joined the Army in the early 1970s, but managed to miss Vietnam. When his hitch ended, the city of Modesto hired him through the federal Public Employment Program (PEP) to help build a city park.

"In those days, people who were good, solid workers for a season or two or three could get (hired)," said Bill Cameron, a former parks official who hired Woodley. "There was not as much of a requirement for reading then."

When the program ended, parks and recreation officials didn't want to lose him. So they altered the hiring process.

"Walter was a dependable, hardworking employee, but he couldn't read well enough to take the test," said Steve Lumpkin, the city's parks operations superintendent. "So we sat down and read questions to him, and when he replied, we wrote down his answers. He has a great memory. You only had to show him something one time. But we knew he had a learning disability as far as his ability to read."

Whenever the job required paperwork, Woodley would consult with his bosses or take it home.