Published Sunday, September 22, 2002
of helping kids learn
living proof
program works
Herald Staff Writer
A former student of the Sharon-based Association for Children with Learning Disabilities Inc. spent the summer helping the tutoring agency that helped give him a new lease on life.
Jeff Cummings, 22, of Dutch Lane in Hermitage, who interned with ACLD this summer, was told when he was 9 that he probably would never learn to read or write because of auditory, visual and sequential learning disabilities.
But with help from the nonprofit agency -- which is marking its 30th year -- and his family, Cummings is a junior at Edinboro University majoring in speech communications. He recently made the dean's list.
"I probably wouldn't have made it without their help," Cummings said.
His mother, Charlotte, a teacher at Hickory High School in Hermitage, calls her son "seriously a walking miracle."
When Jeff's parents were told that he wouldn't be able to read or write, they began to search for other options. "From there, my mom began to read up on where to get help and talked to a lot of counselors at schools and came across ACLD," Cummings said.
ACLD was started in 1972 to help students who needed help learning and their parents and guardians who needed support. Its executive director was Elizabeth Regule of Hermitage.
With the help of his mother and ACLD tutor Mary Fregd of Hubbard, and a lot of hard work, Jeff and his family learned tools to help him with the basics. "My problem wasn't learning the rules, it was learning the names of the letters," he said.
"Mrs. Fregd said, 'Just because you can't read doesn't mean you can't learn,' " Jeff said, adding that he spent a lot of time practicing the alphabet and numbers and learning ways to recognize them. "It just really took a lot of time."
The term used for his learning disability is anomia, which is similar to the difficulty stroke victims have.
"His words would come out scattered, such as, 'cake baked did my mama I," said Mrs. Cummings, adding that her son had many high fevers when he was younger.
He required many hospital stays and was on numerous antibiotics, which may have affected his hearing, she said.
Cummings added, when he was born he had asthma complications.
"The disability is hard to explain. He could understand math concepts, but couldn't identify numbers," Mrs. Cummings said.
"He has a very strong faith, but still can't recite 'The Lord's Prayer' sequentially. Sometimes he still will call a tomato a mushroom or spell his name backwards."
His faith was part of the reason he decided to intern with ACLD this summer.
"I want to go into youth ministry and I wanted to do an internship that dealt with kids, and I also thought it would be a good experience to see what goes on in the business setting in general working with people," Cummings said, adding that doing something for an agency that did so much for him was especially important.
"Jeff would not be where he is today without the support that they gave. He would not have made it through high school," his mother said. "They don't just offer tutorial support but provide the emotional support for parents."
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