On Feb. 4 the Cary Central Rotary Club contributed $750 to establish a Rotary Literacy Program at Swift Creek Elementary School. The program will benefit those students who need assistance but may not have a parent or guardian to provide the guidance needed.

This was a collaborative effort from four levels of administration and staff at the Wake County Public Schools to identify a school in need of the support of this local club.

Said second-grade teacher Rhonda Martin, “This contribution facilitates the purchase of the interactive reading comprehension aid ‘A Butterfly Is Born,’ to be used by second-grade teachers, students and volunteers.”

This aid is aptly named, enabling a struggling student to experience the metamorphosis to a succeeding student as a butterfly with wings to fly. “The literacy program welcomes volunteers to assure students’ success,” said Swift Creek Principal Jim Argent.

Lindy Pollard, club chairman of the literacy project, said he partly wanted to honor his father with this literacy program. A disabled World War II veteran who died in 2006, Ollie Pollard had a limited education.

But Lindy recalls his father stepping up to help him when he was struggling in fourth-grade math.

“If not for his guidance, I would have failed,” Lindy said. “This was the maximum level he mastered in mathematics, yet he shared his knowledge with me so I may succeed the fourth grade with a new understanding of persistence for the rest of my life. I began to understand my early age disability, reading comprehension with the inability to coordinate written response, through the eyes of my dad, who indeed understood lifelong disability.”