How one Eau Claire mentor opened doors for students with dyslexia

It was springtime, 1999. Tracey Ely remembers the moment well.

She and her husband, Bert, had recently bought a small cottage in the Eau Claire community.

They had felt a calling from God to leave a gated community east of Columbia and move into the far less affluent neighborhood off North Main Street. They were working in the front yard of their new home when a little boy named Tony Pear appeared.

“He came around the corner,” Ely said, “and asked, ‘What are you doing? Can I help?’ ”

She explained that they were using landscape pins to secure weed-control fabric in their flower beds. She showed Tony one of the pins, shaped like a long U.

The 10-year-old then disappeared down the street.

The next afternoon he knocked on the Ely’s front door. He presented Ms. Ely with a batch of homemade landscape pins he had created by clipping off the ends of his grandmama’s wire coat hangers so that they were shaped like the real thing.

“There were a lot of them,” Tony said recently, smiling. “I had spent all day doing it and then I took them over there. Miss Tracey opened the door. She was so surprised.”

And deeply touched, Ely said. “I thought, ‘What a precious gift.’ ”

And what a profound moment.

From that simple gift of clipped-off coat hangers emerged a relationship which has endured to this day and a literacy program – Tutor Eau Claire – which has helped hundreds of children like Tony deal with dyslexia.

“From my initial encounter with Tony,” she y said, “Tutor Eau Claire developed, offering first a homework center at my house that ran for about six years.”

Tony, now 26, remembered those school-day afternoons working at Ely’s kitchen table.

“The first time I met Miss Tracey, she was open arms. She took me in. I really didn’t have much guidance at home. My mom and dad were separated and my mom was working full time. I got in trouble at school. Disruptive. I was like a kid crying for help. I didn’t have an answer to anything.”

“Tony was supposed to be in the fourth grade,” Ely said. “He’d already been kicked out of three schools. When he came to me, he refused to read. I said, ‘Tony, I know you can’t read, but if you’ll let me, I’ll help you.’ He just lay down and cried.”

During the earliest days of that relationship, Tony also appeared before a Richland 1 hearing board.

He recalled the meeting.

“They asked me, ‘So what’re you going to do?’ I said to myself, ‘I have a tutor who can help me.’ ” And then he said the same thing to the members of the hearing board who allowed him to return to school.

After the hearing, he delivered the good news to Ely.

“Tony came to the house and said, ‘The hearing board said I can come back to school.’ I asked him, ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘I told them I was going to be OK because you were going to help me.’ ”

Ely smiled. “I realized I had to figure out how to help this little boy.”

So she set up an informal homework center at her kitchen table. Word got around quickly.

Tony’s siblings and cousins turned up on Ely’s doorstep. Then, other children in the neighborhood.

And what Ely figured out was that many youngsters, like Tony, suffered from dyslexia.

“They read slowly,” she said, “and often inaccurately. They have trouble spelling and they have trouble with the sounds of letters.”

So Ely learned everything she could about dyslexia and how to tutor children suffering from it.

And thus, what began at the Ely’s kitchen table 16 years ago has since developed into Tutor Eau Claire. It is directed by Ely and located in the education building of the Eau Claire Presbyterian Church on Wildwood Avenue.

“The church donated the space,” Ely said.

Tutor Eau Claire has a small paid staff and a small corps of trained volunteers. Workshops are offered throughout the year to train parents and volunteers to help children with dyslexia. A particular approach to teaching dyslexic readers – called the Orton-Gillingham method – is used at the center. It incorporates visual, auditory and tactile approaches necessary to help dyslexic children and adults learn to read.

Meanwhile, Ely and Tony still get together at her kitchen table to tackle school work – at the college level.

Tony is a senior studying sports management at Newberry College. He’s a cornerback on the school’s football team and, he said, his “ultimate goal is to set up an organization for kids who are having trouble reading.”

“Miss Tracey basically showed me another life,” Tony said. “She opened a door for me.”

And for so many others.

Know of a story that needs telling? Ms. McInerney may be reached by emailing salley@hartcom.net. She is a writer whose novel, Journey Proud, is based upon growing up in Columbia during the early 1960s.

This story was originally published July 20, 2015 at 11:57 AM.