One person can change the world

It was Dictionary Day, and Doug Inman was talking to the kids.

For the eighteenth time, he and I were distributing dictionaries to Jay County’s third graders.

The project started when I read an article in The Wall Street Journal back in 2002. It was one of the Journal’s “A-head” features that its readers have come to love.

And it was about a cleaning lady in South Carolina named Annie Plummer.

Concerned about the kids in her neighborhood school, she had taken it upon herself to buy dictionaries for the third graders there..

Why third graders?

Because that’s the year a student’s reading and spelling and writing and vocabulary come together in a fundamentally important way. A truism in education is that up to third grade a child is learning to read, after third grade the same student is reading to learn.

More than any other grade, it can be a life-changer.

After I read that Journal article, I happened to stop by the offices of The Portland Foundation to tell Doug about it.

That wasn’t an uncommon stop at the time. I’d been on the foundation board for 10 wonderful years, Doug was at that time on Jay School Board and both of us were profoundly interested in the future of the county’s young people.

So I told him about this cleaning lady and her dictionaries in South Carolina and I walked back to the office.

About the time I walked in the door, there was a phone message.

Doug had read the article, researched the dictionary project, found out how many third graders Jay County had that year and come up for a price on the project.

Would the newspaper be interested in doing it? Of course.

And so, there we were for the 18th time last week, hoping to plant a few seeds that might change a few lives.

I’d done my spiel for the kids, and it was Doug’s turn deliver a message.

Third grade, he told the kids, is about the age when you decide what you want to be when you grow up. And with the help of organizations like The Portland Foundation, he told them, you can grow up to be anything you want.

Anything.

Some of the kids weren’t buying it. We’ve run into that before.

But then it’s time to list some of the occupations this county has spawned: Inventor, astronaut, author, choreographer, doctor, engineer, emergency medical technician, nurse, artist, professional musician, journalist, attorney, farmer, information technology specialist, pastor, actor, psychologist, banker, film maker, lawmaker, veterinarian, entrepreneur and more.

Jay County has produced them all.

The kids’ eyes probably would have glazed over if they’d heard the whole long list.

For me, in third grade, the most likely answer to, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” would probably have been, “Cowboy.”

Not many openings there these days.

Then it was my turn. Doug had finished, and the ball was back in my court.

So I took it back to Annie Plummer and tried to drive a message home.

Remember, I told the kids, this was one person with an idea.

It was one person, and she changed the world.

Thanks to Annie’s inspiration and leadership, thousands of dictionaries have been distributed to third graders all across America.

Our effort in Jay County was the first in Indiana, but others have followed Annie’s example.

One person, I told the kids — not a powerful person, not a wealthy person, just one person — changed the world.

Did we change the world last week?

You never know.