Banner Graphic, Volume 15, Number 1, Greencastle, Putnam County, 4 September 1984 — Page 13

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Charlene Warley teaches reading to Dorothy Thompson, 53, at an adult basic education center in Philadelphia. It is an example of one class that envolved from the Com-

Commission battles low reading skills

By WILLIAM ROBBINS c. 1984 N.Y. Times News Service PHILADELPHIA Eleanor Lewis, at 24 years of age, has gone through two of the most pivotal experiences in her life. The first, seven months ago, was having a baby. “I looked at my baby, and I thought, ‘what am I going to do when she starts asking questions?’” the young mother said the other day. “What would I do when she starts to school? How could I help her? I couldn’t even read.” Those questions led to the second experience. Miss Lewis began learning to read, and, she said, a new world began to open up and old embarrassments began to fall away. Miss Lewis is benefiting from an energetic but low-cost program through which Philadelphia is attacking a problem that is national in scope but perhaps more deeply rooted here than other parts of the country. A key part of Philadelphia’s response to the problem is Marciene Mattleman, a Temple University professor who is now on leave from the university to lead a drive against illiteracy here as executive director of the mayor’s Commission on Literacy. She holds a new position in the administration of Mayor W. Wilson Goode. Mrs. Mattleman is supported by a small staff paid by city and federal funds and a growing number of unpaid tutors who have responded to appeals from Goode for volunteers. Newspapers and television stations have supported the effort, and a local concern has provided a computer to collate students with tutors and both with a growing number of learning centers run by schools, colleges, churches and private agencies. Creation of both the commission and Mrs. Mattleman’s position followed a study that showed Philadelphia had the state’s highest illiteracy rate. Philadelphians are accustomed to thinking of their city as the home of many institutions of higher learning and cultural institutions. But a study last year showed that nearly 40 percent of adult Philadelphians were so low in reading skills that they were considered “functionally illiterate,” that is, unable to read above the fourth-grade level That is about twice as high as the national rate of functional illiteracy and nearly twice the rate cited for New York in a recent report by the State Senate Committee on Investigations. Former Mayor William J. Green responded to the problem by creating the mayor’s Commission on Literacy and Goode carried the project further by naming Mrs Mattleman to the new position and becoming personally involved

Banner Graphic Greencastle, Putnam County, Tuesday, September 4,1984, Vol. 15 No. 1

mission on Literacy, formed when it was discovered the city had the highest illiteracy rate in Pennsylvania.

in promoting her efforts. In a television appeal earlier this year, he urged residents: “If you can read and write, you can teach someone else.” Mrs. Mattleman is not comfortable with the figures used in reports on the problem, she said the other day, because “you don’t know the methodology used.” But, she said, “I know there are hundreds of thousands” of the functionally illiterate here. Like most cities, Philadelphia had adult education centers scattered around the city when Mrs. Mattleman began her new duties, but no one knew how many or where they all were. She published a directory identifying 40 agencies that offer training for the illiterate. Since its publication, she has expanded the list to 60, with 80 new learning centers scheduled to open this fall. “But if all the people who need help came forward,” Mrs. Mattleman said, “there still would not be enough places to put them.” Since last January, about 700 tutors have been trained for the job out of about 2,500 who volunteered. Meanwhile, a steady stream of adults needing help flows through her office, where they are tested for skill levels and appropriate placement. It is important, Mrs. Mattleman said, to find a center close to a student’s community. “A lot of them don’t want to leave their communities because they can’t even read bus signs,” she said. Few people with normal reading skills realize the hardships and embarrassments suffered by those without such abilities, Mrs. Mattleman said. There are mothers who cannot read labels on medicine bottles or the ingredients in foods when they shop, and job applicants become flustered when confronted by forms to fill out. Miss Lewis, who was studying the other day in a classroom operated by the Center for Learning in the City, an agency jointly run by the Philadelphia Community College, the school district and Temple University, is fully aware of the handicaps. Her greatest embarrassment, she said, was trying to read restaurant menus when she was out on a date. Sometimes, she said, she would fake it. “I’d look over the whole menu,” she said. “Then I would just order something simple, something I could read.” Somehow, she said, she had advanced to the 10th grade in high school without learning to read beyond the fifth-grade skill level. Now, she said, in three months of adult education she can read well enough “to order anything on the menu.” But more importantly, she said, “now I feel good about myself.”

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Says seniors still her 'family' Building foundation for Senior Center began with first director Sharon Hammond

By BECKY IGO Banner-Graphic Area News Editor When Sharon Hammond began her association as the first Putnam County Senior Center director some 10 years ago, little did the Greencastle resident realize she would be in the midst of a mutual admiration society. Although time has passed, and Hammond is now Putnam County clerk, she recalls her directorship as the Putnam County Senior Center celebrates its 10th anniversary, talking about the people she affectionately calls her “family.” “WHEN THE CENTER became located where it’s now at, we only had the most western side of the building,” Hammond said of the 9 W. Franklin St., Greencastle, building at the downtown square’s north side. “We only could use half of the building. We had a meeting room, the kitchen area and the RSVP office.” Since that time, the center has expanded to include the eastern half of the building and an upstairs level. The Senior Center became the merging place for the RSVP organization and the Nutrition Program, according to Hammond. “The concept of the center was to be an arm, a third arm of the Putnam County Council on Aging’s RSVP and nutrition programs,” Hammond pointed out The Council promoted and saw that grants were obtained. That agency was the sponsoring organization.” WITH ASSISTANCE FROM Suzanne Fornaro, the first director of RSVP, Hammond began to make the senior citizens programs more identifiable to the county. “One of the big concepts with senior citizens is that you do not isolate them only in terms of their own age group,” Hammond stressed. “The idea is that they should be a part and share their knowledge with those people younger and older than they are. RSVP was already doing that,” Hammond pointed out. “They were taking their volunteers into schools and having them work with other groups.” One way to initiate that contact with different age groups resulted in the information of the Senior Center Kitchen Band, which still thrives today. “We took the band to grade schools, public events, fair programs and to a lot of other

Once an endangered species, the alligator makes comeback as count exceeds million

By JON NORDHEIMER c. 1984 N.Y. Times News Service PORT ST. LUCIE Charlie Tommie Gore mopped the sweat from his brow and examined his prize, which returned his gaze with eyes that were malevolent slits. Thrust on the bottom of Gore’s boat, its powerful head and jaws bound by a thick rubber strap and ropes, was an eight-foot alligator that until Sunday night had been a free-swimming denizen of Port St. Lucie, the fastest-growing residential development in Florida. “He’s pretty ill-looking,” observed Gore, meaning that the alligator’s health was not so grave as its temper. Gore is a professional alligator trapper, and since an 11-year-old Port St. Lucie boy was killed by an alligator while swimming last week, Gore and his helpers have been kept busy handling calls from residents in this community of 30,000 people. The alligator that bit and drowned the boy was killed in the attempt to rescue the boy, but everyone here has stories of alligators crawling along canal banks in search of household pets and about their fear that more attacks on people from the growing alligator population were only a matter of time. Once an endangered species protected by stringent state and federal laws, the Florida alligator has made a spectacular comeback over the past decade. The Florida authorities estimate that the alligator population in the state now exceeds a million. The boy’s death last week was a chilling warning that the pace of Florida’s development and the alligator’s resurgence are on a collision course. “Man and alligator once again are competing for space in Florida,” said Maj. Gwynn Kelley, Everglades region

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SHARON HAMMOND Former senior center director

locations,” Hammond related. THAT MUSICAL START LED to the seniors having their own talent show in 1975-76, Hammond recalls, performed for the public at McAnally Center at Greencastle High School. “We had about 50-100 people participating in that,” Hammond said, indicating that was a major event which made her proud. “We had a small pit orchestra and DePauw University grad assistant Janet Norman helping out. “It was an important step because it let these people express themselves musically through talent they knew, or didn’t know was there. The idea was that you were doing something for yourself, but you were also doing something for other people.” One of the biggest challenges df getting the center on stable ground was having people become involved and accept the concept, according to Hammond. “That’s when we began to talk to organizations and tell them what we were about,” she remarked. “We talked to home ec groups and school children. “All of those people we felt, regardless of age, needed to know about the center, either for relatives, themselves or other people they knew.” IT WAS ALSO IMPORTANT that the entire county be informed and have access to programs offered at the center. “For that reason, the fourth arm was formed and that became the Transportation

manager of the State Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission. There is evidence that the alligator population in Florida was never truly “endangered” by hunters and poachers, who slaughtered them by the thousands for their skins, which were sold to makers of shoes, handbags and other high-priced personal accessories. “It appears now that biologic extinction was not a factor,” said Allan Woodward, a research biologist with the commission. “During the 1960’s the population was greatly reduced, but not to the point of the species being eliminated.” Alligators were taken off the endangered list and placed in a “threatened” classification 10 years ago, when state officials were confronted with a growing number of complaints about alligators crawling into backyards and golf courses. A large relocation program was tried to move large or menacing alligators from populated areas into the wilds of the Everglades. But Florida is honeycombed with drainage canals that link lakes, rivers and bays, giving the alligator, a powerful swimmer propelled by a strong homing instinct, aquatic highways to return to native feeding territories. Six years ago a program was introduced to thin out alligators that were becoming direct threats to human life. Permits were issued to trappers, such as Gore, who responded to complaints and set traps for the pests. Most of the apprehended alligators are shot and killed after the game commission give permission. The animal is skinned and its hide, like the hides of 2,000 other alligators killed by trappers in an average year, is sold at an auction conducted by the state. The trapper receives 70 percent of the auction price.

Program,” Hammond said. “We could begin to bring people from out in the county to the center. “It made the people more flexible and not so dependent on their families. They could come to the center, have lunch, visit with friends, run errands uptown and have transportation back home.” Hammond was also pleased with the inception of “Senior Focus,” a weekly column pertaining to local senior citizens’ news that is still published Mondays in the Banner-Graphic. “WE HAD NEWS to tell people,” Hammond noted, “and that gave us weekly exposure. It gave us a chance to give credit to people who came to the center and who were doing things. It also helped us to make it known to the community what we may need to operate and the people responded.” Gaining acceptance was easier due to the senior citizens becoming involved with the community. “We did not isolate ourselves,” Hammond assured. “We took our programs out to the public and let them be made aware of it.” Recalling the center’s earlier efforts brought about the revelation that the first Greencastle Farmers' Market originated from that point, according to Hammond. “It has now gone to the (Robe-Ann) park, but it was first held outside the Senior Center,” the former director said. “WE HAD PEOPLE WHO raised and planted garden produce to bring it in,” Hammond explained. “The reason we did that was to help get the men more involved. Sometimes it was easier to find things for the women to do, but it was most difficult to keep the men busy.” Expanding that thought, Hammond began having the male members of the group put their handyman expertise to use. “The center itself is a piece of many people,” Hammond pointed out. “To fix a lot of things that needed to be fixed, or to add things we needed, would have cost us a lot of money. “We saved those labor costs by having the men construct what we needed. It gave them a sense of pride. In fact, they almost built their own place.” In addition to the work, Hammond offered time for recreation, while planning fishing trips and checkers tournaments.

The trappers are also entitled to sell meat from the animal’s long thick tail, a food is prized by some as a delicacy. “The taste is somewhere between chicken and frogs legs, slightly on the pork side,” said Gore, who sells alligator steaks to local restaurants for $5 a pound and may take 80 pounds of meat off a 12-foot animal. At night he does his trapping, using a hook baited with a marsh rabbit or a similar animal with “a strong odor.” In the day, Gore, clearly a man untroubled by the nightmares of ordinary men, works as a state archivist monitoring the underwater operations of treasure hunters, diving in the ocean with sharks and barracudas. His concern about the future is not so much that the alligator population will grow but that the human population will. He expressed fear that retirees and others moving to Florida would push ever further into the animal’s habitat. The problem, he said, is that alligators are losing their natural fear of humans because of increased contact. Newcomers to developments like Port St. Lucie, which has doubled in population since the 1980 census, are charmed by baby alligators and like to feed them. They discover that alligators love marshmallows, and photographs of a footlong alligator chomping on a marshmallow with needlelike teeth make cute souvenirs for friends up north. By the time an alligator is 10 years old, much of the cuteness is gone. It is more than six feet long and capable of killing or maiming a human. Growth continues throughout its life span of more than 40 years, and an old bull alligator can

HAMMOND POINTS TO the people involved at the center as the reason it made her time as director a period of great joy. “The people there were incredibly receptive,” she praised. “You really felt loved and I loved them. There was never anything that I ever did for them that they did not return to me. “They taught me a great deal with their experience. We did run against some stigmas, especially during some of the renovation of the center. We laid the carpeting piece-by-piece in the back room. In fact, it’s still there. “Some of the people would say they were too old to do this or that. But I would tell them there are no limits, regardless of age,” Hammond said of her philosophy. “The only limits we have are those we place upon ourselves. “Oh, they may become somewhat limited because they had to retire, or they had to move into a smaller living place. But, our society shouldn’t coddle people because they get older. They have a tremendous amount of energy and experience. We should borrow from that.” HAMMOND WORKED TO SEE that the center became an informational place for senior citizens, along with being an educational zone. These concepts are kept alive today through the programs offered. Although Hammond’s contact with the center began a decade ago, and she no longer serves as center director, a part of her remains. “I can’t begin to tell jou what these people have meant to me,” Hammond said. “I have lost many friends throughout the years there. When I occasionally go back to the center, I know it will always be a part of me. “I’ll see some of the people on the street and they’ll tell me they miss me,” Hammond reveals, “and I tell them I miss them too. I really do. They always try to keep me up to date on what is going on. “It was difficult to leave, in one sense of the word,” Hammond said. “It was a family-type atmosphere. As long as I am living, and although some of them may pass away before me, they will still be alive through me...through their concepts and by what they taught me. It was a tremendous experience.”

measure more than 13 feet in legnth and weigh nearly a half ton. Alligators in captivity consume the equivalent of 5 percent of their weight in food a week. Those in the wild, being much more active, eat more. Fish, turtles, crayfish, snakes and waterbirds constitute the bulk of their diet, but Florida alligators have developed an appetite for pet dogs. Toy poodles with ribbons on the head and Labrador retrievers fetching sticks from a pond have been gobbled up. Fortunately, the Florida alligator has exhibited little of the man-eater instinct of its cousin, the Nile crocodile. “Alligators don’t have the same aggressive temperament,” Woodward said. “They are naturally wary of man.” Only about a half-dozen attacks by alligators are reported each year, and last week’s death was just the sixth confirmed killing of a human being by an alligator in Florida since 1948. The question raised by the latest death was whether conditions were changing fast enough to change the nature of the alligator. “With all the development going on here, the alligators are like the Indians, and we’re moving them out of their territory into smaller spaces,” said Eugene Schmidt, a retired salesman from Chicago who bought a house in Port St. Lucie six years ago. “The gators feel they belong here, too, and once they’re cornered, they get dangerous.”