STARTI
OVER

 

Bob Allenback still doesn't
know that, three years ago, his
close friend Pat Blackburn went
back to school at age 35 to learn
to read and write.

It wasn’t remedial reading and
a refresher course in grammar to
improve Blackburn's English

composition. It was back-to-the-__ fF

alphabet basics for a guy who
couldn't read so much as a Bat-
man comic book.

And inillworker Allenback, the
best man at Blackburn's wed-

my. wasn't the only one kept in
dark about his friend's illiter-
acy. Blackburn's wife, Judy,
didn't know until several years
after the wedding.

Blackburn was an old hand at
keeping it a secret. He's going
public now by way of doing his
bit for Project Literacy B.C., an
outreach program for the prov-
ince’s 275,000 functionally-illiter-
ate adults — those who are, for

example, unable to read the -

directions on an Aspirin bottle.
(They can make a start on
coming out of the closet by
phoning the Project Literacy
office in Delta at 594-0664.)
Blackburn's problem goes
back to when his father was a
construction superintendent. He
moved from job to job so often
that, by age 15, Pat had attended
16 different schools in Blighty
and Australia, .
Somehow, in schooling gypsy-
style, he moved up through the
grades without learning to read.
“Twas good in art and metal-
work and god-awlul in everything
else,” says Blackburn. "
“But they just kept moving me

ahead.”
Its called social promotion
and based on the idea that it is

better to move youngsters along
with their age group than to hold
them back because of failing
grades.

“The worst part was the wor-

 

MAD HATTER

 

  
 

 

 

 

Statf photo by Wayne Leidentrost

Pat Blackburn is making up for lost time through Project Literacy B.C.

 

rying that my friends or guys |
worked with would find out how
limited I was.”

Blackburn got by without read-
ing and writing in a string of jobs
— construction laborer, auto
body man, car plant worker —
and he ran his own motorcycle
business, Custom Chopper in
Surrey.

“What saved me was a good
memory and a lot of help from
my wife,” he said.

As a car plant quality control
inspector, he was able to fill out
reports by copying from a card

list of words that Judy taught
him.

“When | couldn't come up with
the right word, I'd put down
some kind of squiggle and mark
the trouble spot on the diagram
and let them figure it out.

“Ifit hadn't been for the acci-

‘dent, I'd still be faking it,” Black-

burn says.
Blackburn doesn't want to

" dwell on what happened in 1980

after his Dodge 4x4 ran off the
Lougheed Highway near Deroche
and caught fire.

He came out of hospital with
his legs amputated well above
the knees. Part of coming to
terms with life in a wheelchair
was finding the courage to tell
some stranger that he couldn't
read or write.

. “It took me a year to finally
decide to do that,” he said.

At Douglas College in New
Westminster, they found that
Blackburn's reading skills were
about the same as a Grade 1
school kid,

In 1983, he enrolled in Jean
Cameron's Literacy Course in
Room 4219. With 12 other adults,
he started with the alphabet and
drill in the common one-syllable
words and spelling.

Now, Blackburn is reading at a
Grade 9 level. After he gets his
Grade 12 certificate next spring,
he will go on to architecture,
drafting or something in
between.

There are so many things a
guy can do if he can read and
write,’ Blackburn said.