History of Reading News. Vol.XIX No.1 (1995:Fall)

Sitting in the files of the History of Reading group is a letter dated November 25, 1980. "Recently we have come across some historical materials dealing with early Utah public school attempts to use a special alphabet in the 1850-1870 period," wrote Garr Cranney, then coordinator of the Learning Laboratory of Brigham Young University's College of Education. A second letter from Garr of the same date begins, "Please send information about how to obtain your newsletter, papers, journal and other publications. Also, is it possible to obtain them without becoming a member of your special interest group? Time and budget limitations do not always permit attendance at the I.R.A. convention."

Garr soon overcame his initial reluctance to join our group, and all of us have been his beneficiaries. Our records are filled with his quest for knowledge and his openness on asking help from others. In March, 1982, he asked the newsletter editor for a bibliography on the history of reading and for all back copies of the History of Reading News. "History of reading is a fascinating area but finding sources and information at least on our campus is difficult. Can you or your special interest group help us?" We could help him with the back issues, but not the bibliography: we replied that there was none.

It was on May 4, 1983, at the annual convention of the International Reading Association held at Anaheim, that most of us in the group met Garr for the first time. He was one of the presenters at our SIG meeting, discussing Susan Grover's and his paper, "Reading on the Utah Frontier: The Rise and Demise of the Deseret Alphabet, 1850-1877." (He did a nice job, with plenty of overheads.) Garr was a stalwart presenter thereafter. He talked on the "History of Reading: A Bible Corpus for Reading Professionals," in May 1985. Five years later, he and Afton Miner, a librarian at Brigham Young University, presented their paper on the Alexandrian library of antiquity.

By this time Garr had been a member of the executive committee for several years. He was made a member-at-large in 1984, and elected secretary in 1986. Thereafter, we found that we could not do without him. He served again as secretary for the following year, 1987-1988; and as president for 1988-89 and 1989-1990. He remained on the executive board for another two years as the immediate past president. When further successions made him the immediate past president no longer, we all missed him so much that the following year we invited him to serve as treasurer. He was elected for a three-year term beginning in the fall of 1993, and was still serving the SIG in that capacity this August.

It was characteristic of Garr that when he needed something that wasn't there, he would create it himself. His response to the lack of a bibliography on the history of reading was to compose one. With Janet Miller of Northern Kentucky University, herself a past president, he conducted a survey to find out how much history of reading was being included in graduate reading programs. (Precious little, was his and Janet's conclusion, based on the 195 responses they received from institutions across the country.) He and Janet published their results in the Journal of Reading in February, 1987. As well as a full bibliography that is still useful today, their article includes a wealth of information on sister organizations and on textbook collections.

Meanwhile, again in the spirit of creating something he believed was needed, Garr had been exploring the possibility of creating and teaching a graduate course in the history of reading himself. Ever open to new ideas, he traveled to the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1986 to attend a conference on teaching courses in the History of the Book.

Garr's great coup, a year later, was not just the creation of a new course but its designation as a required one. As Garr wrote triumphantly in the "Members' News" column of the newsletter in the spring of 1988: "Approved finally in our university is a required graduate course in the Reading program, 'History of Books and Reading Instruction,' to begin in 1989, winter semester. After four years of lobbying, arm twisting, etc., it has happened! I've a lot to do this year to prepare but it has great potential. The Journal of Reading article was the clincher and seemed to convince everyone that history was a worthy cause."

Garr reported on this course, now named the "Historical Foundations of Reading Instruction," in the spring of 1993. That year, he was teaching twelve graduate students: "It's an absolute joy to teach and to watch students discover the importance of knowing history and its implications for present practice. Hopefully, others will catch the vision and know the benefits that come from the historical knowledge of our profession."

Those who "caught the vision" of course included his own students. Inspired by his course, several of them, including Marne Isakson and Cari Gali, presented their own research at sessions of the International Reading Association.

The creation of this course and the publication of a bibliography by no means exhausted Garr's contributions to the history of reading. He was a constant source of suggestions and items for the newsletter and appeared in it in person several times as an author. In the issue of spring 1989 he contributed an essay titled, "Why Study the History of Reading?" (It is reproduced again now on page 6). Four years later, he reviewed Allan Luke's Literacy, Textbooks and Ideology: Postwar Literacy and the Mythology of Dick and Jane. Garr closed his review by remarking that Luke had noted the similarities between current discussions of literacy in Canada and those of the earlier postwar period. Luke had expressed the hope that some lessons remained for us from the not so distant past. "Amen to that!" Garr ended his review: "History can teach us much if we will let it."

By E. Jennifer Monaghan, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York