Corona Library :: For many Inland residents, illiteracy remains a daily struggle, but libraries and others are trying to help.

For many Inland residents, illiteracy remains a daily struggle, but libraries and others are trying to help.

Press Enterprise: 6.10.2016 by Patrick O’Neill

For the first 80 years of her life, the sentence you are reading would have been nothing more than indecipherable symbols to Eleanor Miller.

Born in 1932 to young, adventurous and largely absent parents, Miller was raised by her blind grandmother in a small Pasadena home. Her family never noticed she couldn't read, and teachers passed her "because I never gave them any trouble," Miller said during a reading lesson at the Corona Public Library.

Now 84, the neatly dressed mother of seven sat, hands folded in her lap, recalling the difficulties of a life void of the written word. Like the time her son needed a doctor's note for school. Miller told him to write it up himself, then copied the letters on a separate sheet.

"People that can't read or write, they memorize stuff to continue this illusion," Miller said. "You avoid situations where you can't fake it."

Twenty percent of Inland residents older than 16 can't comprehend basic texts. That 2003 figure, the most current available, had more than doubled since 1992, National Center for Educational Statistics data show.  READ MORE @