As told to Bonnie Wren by Lenny Bobbio, ’72.
Mrs. Sleigh had the insight, fortitude and courage to come up to me and say, “Hey, you need some extra help, and I want to help.”
Mrs. Rose Sleigh
I had no understanding of the importance of the English language. I felt, like, “Hey, I can read!” Mrs. Sleigh asked, “But can you express yourself coherently?”
She saw the problem, pointed it out. I accepted it, it wasn’t forced upon me, But she said, “If you don’t get any help you won’t amount to much.” I wanted nothing to do with English, but she went out on a limb and said, “I can help, and I can get you a student tutor.”
That’s how Madelyn Scalise (’71) came to tutor me in English. I would go to her house two hours a night, twice a week through my sophomore and junior year. She volunteered for free, helped me understand sentence structure, taught me how to write 100 or 500-word report, everything I needed to get ready to go to college.
Madelyn and Mrs. Sleigh both had to be working together. I’m sure they had plenty of meetings about me in between. I was more than a special project. I was a special basket case!
When they were done I could actually write a coherent sentence and paragraph. That’s the only reason why I was able to graduate college. The way I was before? There’d have been no way I could’ve been accepted anywhere.
Mrs. Sleigh made a difference, because she took the initiative and went with it, went with her gut feeling. She saw more in me than what I saw as to what I could accomplish. She knew the imprtance of being able to express myself in writing. To me, she made the difference.
Lenny Bobbio, ’72
