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Personal Profiles
SUCCESS STORY:
HARRY SYLVESTER
Harry Sylvester grew up on a farm in northernmost Maine, a rugged, rural country where the timber industry shaped the nature of community life. These were the years of the Great Depression, but Harry did just fine. From the very beginning, he showed a remarkable degree of comfort and ability around anything mechanical. He operated farm machinery even as a very young boy, and if something wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, why, he’d just fix it!
Harry’s problems began when he entered the all-grades-in-one-building country school at the age of six. No matter how hard he would try, he simply could not make sense of the words on the page in front of him. No matter how long he took, he couldn’t finish the exercises he was assigned nor pass any quizzes. His teachers — year after year, it turned out —came at him with exactly the same expectations and instructions, regardless of their failures. Instead, they would punish Harry, keeping him in at recess, making him stand out in the hallway, effectively isolating him from every one of his peers. Harry went through school an academic failure and a social misfit.
His accustomed struggles and challenges took an odd turn when he was finally passed along into high school. Now, when the traditionally bright students began to fuss and fume over knotty algebra problems, Harry shone. At first, he couldn’t understand what was happening, he was so used to failing in class. Finally, math and the sciences seemed to be written in languages Harry understood well! Finally recognizing his formerly hidden intellectual potential, his teachers issued passing grades in his language related classes so he could go on to college.
That Harry did, earning a degree in mechanical engineering. He earned something even more valuable during his college years, too, the love and support — and lots of practical help with reading and writing — of a wonderful woman named Janet Mayo. Harry and Janet married after he finished his sophomore year. Thus began a lifelong collaborative partnership that, among other things, enabled Harry to succeed in a literate world.
Harry started a successful trucking business with a partner, then sold out and worked as an engineer in the paper mills. His success as an engineer was always tempered by his limitations in literacy. As he says, “There is no place that the Peter Principle kicks in faster than when a person in the workplace has a learning disability.” Harry ultimately found his groove designing and building fiberglass sailboats, ocean-going Whitehalls.
When Harry was in his early 50s, Janet ran across an article in Reader’s Digest about dyslexia. It explained a lot of Harry’s difficulties. Soon, they attended a joint conference of the Maine Association for Adults and Children with Learning Disabilities (ACLD, now LDA) and the Orton Dyslexia Society (now International Dyslexia Association, IDA). “…for the first time in my life I met other people that understood the issues I was trying to deal with. It was a life-changing event for me.” Harry had long thought he was the only one in the world with these problems!
Harry formed support groups for young people with learning disabilities, became involved in the LDA of Maine, and went on to distinguished service on the LDA national board of directors, and as its treasurer. In 1998-1999, Harry served two consecutive terms as President of the Learning Disabilities Association of America.
Learning Disabilities Association of America
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