The Paul Fox Memorial Foundation has given Read Aloud West Virginia $4,000, which the Fox family raised at its Memorial Golf Tournament in May. The family started the event in memory of Paul Fox, who was an avid golfer. He also was an avid reader, a trait that influenced future generations of the Fox family and ultimately resulted in their gift to Read Aloud.
The event attracted 112 players. BrickStreet was the lead sponsor.
Son-in-law David Walker explained, “Paul was an avid golfer. He got me into golf. He also was an avid reader. He was not a college person, but he was an unbelievable reader. It rubbed off on my girls. My oldest daughter Kinsey went into philosophy (an area of strong interest for Fox.)” She joined Teach for America and now is pursuing a degree in education policy at Vanderbilt University.
Walker, who has a degree in education, read aloud in his daughters’ classrooms for 10 or 12 years at Richmond Elementary in Charleston, and he is occasionally asked back to read even now. The teachers need men to serve as reading role models, he said.
Walker’s wife, Kathleen, and daughters Kinsey and Karley all have been volunteer readers and attended Seuss-A-Palooza events at BrickStreet, where Walker is employed as a safety and loss consultant, and then Read-A-Palooza at Paterno’s at the Park in Charleston.
That exposure led Kinsey to ask her father, “Why don’t we make a donation to Read Aloud West Virginia?” which they did.
The importance of a strong grandparent-parent-child connection exemplified by the Fox-Walker family is one that Read Aloud emphasizes through its parent education program, Director Mary Kay Bond said. Parents and grandparents remain the primary influence in creating lifelong readers.
“That is a crucial link,” she said. She plans to expand Read Aloud’s efforts in this area with physicians and the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program.
“The Fox contribution is an incredible gift,” Bond said. “It gives us flexibility to more easily tailor programs to chapter needs.”