Ray Friend’s students get upset if he takes a day off. That’s how much they look forward to their time with him. You would think the guy is entitled. He has been at this job for 20 years, and he is not paid for it.
But he tries never to disappoint them. On this day, Friend is in a small room at the Countryside Association, sitting with a young woman who is reading a book about baby animals. His voice soft but encouraging, he guides her through animal stories in a National Geographic Book series.
This is where you will find Friend three days a week, working with young and not-so-young adults with developmental, physical or mental disabilities in a reading program designed mostly by him. Some of his students have been meeting with him the entire 20 years.
Friend, 74, of Mt. Prospect doesn’t just show up for two or three hours on his days at the center, which has a Palatine address but is in Lake County. He arrives at 8:15 a.m. and works until 2:30 p.m., dividing his time into eight periods of 30 minutes each, with some preparation time added in. Currently he has 27 in his program, 16 in small group sessions and 11 one-on-one.
Program coordinator Teresa Positano of Arlington Heights said of Friend: “I can’t say enough about Ray. He is just a wonderful man.”
And Deborah Hoyt of Lake-in-the-Hills, assistant director, described him as “a caring person. We are so lucky to have him. . . . He is the reading program.”
For his 20 years of service, Countryside honored Friend last fall with a luncheon, a certificate for additional books and a sweatshirt that reads: So Many Books–So Little Time. The recognition pleased Friend but also embarrassed him, he said.
“They made a big deal of it–too big a deal,” he said. “I feel if you’re not useful in your life, you’re not much worth being around. What’s nice is when a parent will tell me at an open house that their child now picks up a newspaper even if they can’t read all that much or they can now read signs on the street, and how much they enjoy coming here. I get more satisfaction seeing someone make progress than having someone stand up and say what a nice guy I am. I’ve traveled all my life, and (I) had enough of that, and I don’t golf. I’ve found my niche in life right here.”
“Here” is the Countryside Association, which describes itself as a not-for-profit social service organization serving individuals with developmental, physical and mental disabilities and their families in Lake and northern Cook counties. There is a sister facility, Lakeside Center, in Waukegan. Both have training centers and in-home community outreach programs.
Currently the association has 145 clients, ranging in age from 18 to 74, most of whom work in small assembly-line jobs for companies such as Quill Corp., Abbott Laboratories, Rustoleum or Cole-Parmer, which contract with Countryside.
Friend came along strictly by chance. Twenty years ago, when he was working as a flight engineer for American Airlines, a job he held for 36 years, he concluded that he needed more exposure to the liberal arts, because his college courses had tended to be mostly technical. So he signed up for a few classes in psychology and history at Harper College in Palatine. One of his classroom assignments was to do a paper on the disabilities field, and the teacher suggested that Friend look into the work being done at Countryside.
Friend thought it sounded interesting and signed up as a volunteer in the reading program. After barely three months, the staff member who had been in charge of the program became too busy with other duties, so Friend inherited it.
For the first several years Friend was teaching under the Edmark reading program, which had been instituted shortly before he arrived. That program consists of four phases, with 150 words being taught strictly by sight in the first book. New words were added in the books that followed, but there was no program more advanced.
Then Friend and another volunteer, Inger Kane (who has since left), devised a program geared to the 5th and 6th grade reading levels. Based on a 54-book National Geographic Book series, the program was named by the volunteers as the World We Share. Today he and volunteer John DeWolf of Libertyville handle the program themselves.
With his retirement in May 1986, Friend was able to increase his volunteer schedule. Though it’s a 25-minute trip from his home, Friend said, “I still look forward to coming up here. The best part of the job is being able to give something to another person who has seldom had someone pay attention just to him. Some volunteers have found it depressing and left. These clients are different, yes, but they are very special people, capable of a lot of emotion.”
The students look forward to his arrival with equal enthusiasm.
“She just loves it. . . . It’s her favorite thing to do,” said Linda Irvin of Highland Park, speaking of her 33-year-old daughter, Laura Martin, who has epilepsy and is mentally handicapped. “She’s always saying, `Ray said this’ or `Ray said that.’ The day before a session, she says she must get ready for Ray. He’s an important part of her life. He brings out the excitement of learning and treats them with respect.”
Another Highland Park mother, Coletta Ramelow, echoed Irvin’s thoughts. She too has a 33-year-old daughter, Peggy, whom she describes as severely retarded and “sweet as the day is long.”
“Peggy has been going there since 1986 and sees Ray every Friday, and she’s always interested in attending,” Ramelow said. “She’s very happy with the program. I think he must be an outstanding volunteer.”
Friend’s wife, Barbara, who has tutored children in reading and math, said he gets as much out of volunteering as he puts into it. “It keeps him busy and mentally sharp, and it keeps him from giving me orders,” she said, adding with a laugh, “Sometimes I think it’s an obsession with him.”
But the biggest clue to his motivation hangs on a wall in his small office. It is a framed quote from “Passions and Prejudices” by Leo Rosten: “I cannot believe the purpose of life is to be `happy.’ I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.”
