Darlene Jackson, Newtown Volunteer

For Literacy Volunteers Of America

To Darlene Jackson, volunteering is a way of life. Among her passions is training tutors for Literacy Volunteers of America, Danbury region, in English as a Second Language.

“There’s a great deal to love about LVA. Foremost for me is learning about people from diverse backgrounds and about their cultures,” she said in an interview while the first major snowstorm of the season was covering the landscape outside her Newtown home.

Mrs Jackson said she has learned to be careful about admiring items that are owned by Vietnamese families because they are so generous that they immediately want to give her the item. She also remembers an occasion when she gave a Vietnamese student a corsage for an LVA awards program, and learned that in Vietnam, flowers are worn only for funerals.

As much as she enjoys learning about the differences, Darlene Jackson also enjoys finding areas she has in common with her students. She remembers an American Basic Reading student who quit school in the third grade. Through their conversation, they learned that they both have roots in North Carolina, which formed the basis for further explorations.

Originally from Southern California, where she was a scholarship student at the USC, Darlene Jackson earned a master’s degree at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 1958. It was there that  she met her husband, Donald Dale Jackson. After living in Baltimore and Madison, Wis., the couple traveled to Europe on a freighter,  then bought a Lambretta and traveled throughout England, France, Spain, and Italy for several months before returning to the United States and settling in San Francisco, where Don worked for United Press International. They moved to Manhattan when Don was recruited to Life magazine.

In 1965 their son, Dale Allen, was born in New York, followed two years later by their daughter Amy Lynn. Then the family moved to Newtown, where Darlene became a stay at home mom. She soon also found herself volunteering for the PTA and Camp Fire Boys and Girls. In 1976, she began working part-time for Camp Fire and then became its executive director, a position she held until 1991, when the Camp Fire’s Danbury office closed.

Meanwhile, her husband had left Life magazine to write a book, Judges. He did freelance writing for various magazines and Time-Life Books, and then wrote a second book, Gold Dust. He retired last year after many years as a contract writer for Smithsonian magazine.

When Camp Fire closed its Danbury office, Darlene Jackson finally had the opportunity she had been waiting for to volunteer for a number of different organizations, including her major interest, Literacy Volunteers. In 1992, she took the LVA training to be a tutor in both ESL and Basic Reading. After tutoring for several years, Mrs Jackson went through further training with Ellen Parrella, another Newtown LVA volunteer, to become a workshop leader to train other tutors. “Ellen is a wonderful tutor and an inspiration and great source to many of us,” Darlene said.

When asked what makes LVA such a terrific volunteer opportunity, Darlene re-sponds without even pausing. “It’s fun!” she said. “It’s also important work because learning to speak English is the critical first step for immigrants to become a part of our society. Our volunteers also find it very rewarding because they can see the progress, week after week. And it only takes 2 or 3 hours each week of volunteer time, having conversations and teaching adults who are not native speakers of English.”

“The summer that we worked with the Kosovar refugees in the Cyrenius Booth Library in Newtown was great. They were a lot of fun – so bright, friendly, and motivated. Now they are functioning in our society, holding jobs, buying cars, and raising their families.”

Mrs Jackson also pointed out that many volunteers like the convenience provided by LVA. If a volunteer from Newtown would like to tutor someone who lives in Newtown, LVA will try to match the volunteer with a Newtown resident. And it doesn’t take any foreign language knowledge. “If you speak English, you can learn some techniques and tools during training and become a good tutor,” Mrs Jackson said.

LVA is not the only volunteer work that Darlene Jackson does. She writes a regular column in The Bee for the Newtown Tennis Association, and she is also active in the Newtown Congregational Church, the Danbury Regional Commission on Child Care Rights and Abuse, Inc. (including serving as its past president), and the Greater Danbury Coalition for Community United (also past president), which celebrates and encourages diversity; and she serves on the Allocations Committee of the United Way of Northern Fairfield County, after having served a number of years on the fund-raising side of the United Way.

Darlene’s and Don’s latest joy is the birth of their fifth grandchild, Eliza Jean, born November 21 to their daughter Amy and her husband, Rob, who live in Norwalk. Their other grandchildren are a boy, Boone, in Norwalk, and three girls, Mackenzie, Lindsey, and Sydney, children of their son Dale and his wife, Kathi, in Southern California.

Darlene Jackson is now looking forward to her next training sessions for LVA in English as a Second Language. It will be held from 9 am to 2:30 pm on three successive Saturdays beginning January 20. Volunteers who sigh up through that date may attend.

For further information about Literacy Volunteers of America, readers are invited to call the LVA office in Danbury, 203/792-8260, or e-mail LVA-D@snet.net.