Ruth Johnson Colvin, founder of Literacy Volunteers of America, has died at the age of 107

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — Ruth Johnson Colvin, founder of the Literacy Volunteers of America, who 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.

According to ProLiteracy, the nonprofit organization formed in 2002 through the merger of Literacy Volunteers and Laubach Literacy, Colvin died Sunday in Syracuse, New York. She served on the organization's board of directors until her death.

“We owe ProLiteracy not only to Ruth and her founding of Literacy Volunteers of America, but also to her innate understanding that literacy is a right,” an online tribute said. “We are proud to have had the opportunity to learn from her for so long. Ruth willingly shared her wisdom with the staff at ProLiteracy and always encouraged us to continue our fight to improve adult literacy.”

Colvin, an avid reader herself, founded the organization Literacy Volunteers in 1962 to combat illiteracy and teach people to read after seeing 1960 census data showing that there were 11,000 illiterate people in the Syracuse area where she lived.

“In the 1950s, America was not aware that it had an illiteracy problem. We thought illiteracy only existed in India, Africa and 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 into numerous other countries, training volunteers in simple methods of learning to read. Her work took her and her husband, Bob Colvin, to dozens of countries. The two were 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 an autobiography published in 2020, when Colvin was 103 years old.

“Sometimes you have to give up security and find trust and faith and believe in your passions,” she wrote.

She has kept hundreds of letters that she has received over the years from tutors, students and supporters, according to the ProLiteracy tribute.

“These letters,” it said, “represented her life’s work and proved that everyone can make a difference in the lives of others.”