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So on a spring day in 1966, she filled a bag full of books and at the next tutoring session spread them on top of a desk. She told the children that they could each choose a book and take it home to keep. Their faces, full of excitement, made McNamara curious. She asked the boys if they had any books of their own. They said "no." These were, in fact, the first books the boys had ever owned. After discussing the incident with other tutors who had had similar experiences, McNamara decided that she wanted to start a project to put books into the hands of thousands of children in D.C.'s inner-city schools. That May, she invited a group of public school volunteers, teachers, librarians, and women interested in helping children to her house for coffee and to discuss the book give-away idea. Her objective was "to get enough books to the children that they would begin to build their own home libraries and take pride in the ownership of books," the first RIF programs director, Barbara Atkinson, remembers from that meeting. While the program began yielding positive results, McNamara was busily finding support for her idea. She approached the D.C. Citizens for Better Public Education and they agreed to be the umbrella sponsoring agency for the initial Reading Is Fundamental pilot programs in the District of Columbia schools. The first RIF program was initiated on November 3, 1966, with book distributions in two elementary schools. The program was subsequently expanded to 60 D.C. schools, with support from local businesses. During this first year, 200,000 books were chosen and kept by 41,000 D.C. schoolchildren. By February of 1967, McNamara had secured a $150,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support pilot activities in the District. These early RIF programs were administered almost as they are today. RIF soon began to expand beyond schools to reach children in such places as community centers, daycare facilities, even laundromats, with the help of a RIF bookmobile purchased with Ford funds. Following the success RIF had in Washington, the Ford Foundation increased RIF's grant to $285,000 in August 1968, enabling RIF to launch 10 model programs across the country. From these early beginnings through 1975, RIF evolved into a national motivating force for literacy, serving children in 261 programs in 46 states. Margaret McNamara died in 1981, knowing that her dream of making reading fun and fundamental had become a reality. |
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Margaret McNamara was frustrated. She was tutoring four young Washington, D.C., boys and they were not progressing well. The former teacher from California and wife of then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara concluded that the reading materials provided by their school were not appealing. She thought some of her son's books might engage them more. 
