FARMINGTON — Once a week for eight months a year, Literacy Volunteer Doreen Whitmore visits the Miller family at their home in Embden.

Sitting around the kitchen table, she helps five family members with math, spelling and reading.

“She makes the work a project,” Henry Miller Jr. said. “She makes us want to learn to read.”

The Millers and Whitmore were among the students and tutors who gathered Thursday to celebrate Literacy Volunteers of Franklin and Somerset Counties’ 35th anniversary.

During the celebration, an annual meeting and recognition of tutors and students was held at Henderson Memorial Baptist Church. Entertainment was provided by Mike Burd and the Merry Plinksters on their ukuleles.

“We have accomplished much over the past 35 years,” Becky Jasch, executive director said in the annual report. “Although there is no tangible way to measure all we have done to promote literacy over the years, the changed lives of the individuals we serve are a testimony to all the good we have done.”

After one member of the Miller family became a student, other members started learning, too, Whitmore said. Now parents Henry and Elsie, their adult children, Henry III and Lauri Boulette, and middle-school-age granddaughter, Jasmine, receive whatever help they need, be it math, reading or spelling, Whitmore said. They’ve received instruction, off and on, over the past 20 years, she added.

“We all learn differently,” she said. “It’s about finding the right key (to learning) and it works.”

As a volunteer, Whitmore says the program is about flexibility for both student and tutor. While she spends winters in the south, the Millers have contact via letters and the computer.

“I don’t have to be here,” she said.

She also now has the flexibility of getting most materials she needs through programs on the Internet.

Four of the Millers attended the meeting to receive certificates for their work.

Tutors were also recognized. Some have helped others learn for several of the organization’s 35 years, Jasch said.

Former Literacy Volunteers Executive Director Joan Moes was recognized for 25 years with the local literacy group. Other 25-year volunteers noted were Ellen Nadeau and Andrea Keirstead.

Other long-term volunteers included: 20 years of service, Lois Starbird and Lisa Panori; 15 years, William Laney, Corrilla Hastings and Sara Bobson; 10 years, Doris Westgate, Sue Thorson and Sheryl Ryman; and 5 years, Janice Ogilvie, Susan Knight, Catherine Farmer, Jason Blood, Ruth Blood and Lucille Porter.

Over the past year, 24 new tutors were trained to help with the 50 students working with tutors, Jasch reported. A new Tutor Connect program was started to support new tutors as they work with students.

A Teen Tutor Program continues in four schools. A grant has been received to fund the program in 2014. 

Students are trained to help younger students, Dorothy Carter, coordinator, said. Last year, a third-grader was trained to work with a kindergarten student, she added.

Board officers were elected including Cindie Norton, president; Debra Burchfield, vice president; Joan Moes, secretary; and Alexis DesRoches, treasurer.

More information is available at 778-3460 or [email protected]

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