[This GoFundMe is organized on behalf of my dear friend Kiran for her mother, Elizabeth.]

Help a Pioneer of Early Literacy and Childhood Development Live Her Final Years With Dignity

My mother is 84 years old. She is going blind from macular degeneration, has suffered multiple serious falls and has recently been told by her care team / rehabilitation center she can no longer live independently. She now requires 24/7 assisted living care. Asking for help like this is incredibly hard—but we are out of options.

Who She Is

My mom grew up in extreme poverty in a small coal-mining town in Alabama—no running water, no indoor plumbing. Through sheer determination, brilliance, and grit, she became the first in her family to attend college, skipping two grades along the way. She went on to attend William & Mary (in the first year women were admitted), became a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Harvard, and earned her doctorate at the University of Virginia.

She is a world-recognized pioneer in early literacy and childhood development, having developed benchmark standards used across the U.S. and internationally. Her research has shaped how millions of children—especially those in underserved communities—learn to read. She was offered the role of U.S. Secretary of Education multiple times but chose to stay closer to the classroom, where she believed real change happened.

She has spent her life advocating for equity, education, and opportunity—often at personal risk. As a young woman in college, she helped form one of the first interracial study groups on her campus. The Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on her lawn in response. She was terrified—but she refused to back down and held the study group again the very next day. This is who she is.

How We Got Here

Despite a lifetime of achievement and service, a series of events beyond her control erased her financial safety net: She was forced into early retirement to care for her terminally ill husband 6 months after they were married. The 2008 financial crash wiped out retirement savings. Chronic health issues and progressive vision loss followed. She has no remaining family other than me. She now survives solely on Social Security. In recent weeks, her condition worsened rapidly. After another fall and hospitalization, we were told she can no longer return home and must move into assisted living with full-time care.

Why We’re Asking for Help

We are trying to raise $45,000 to cover immediate and unavoidable costs, including:

Why This Matters

After a lifetime of giving—educating generations of children, mentoring educators, fighting for equity—my mother deserves to finish her life with dignity, safety, and compassion. We don’t ask for help unless we’re truly desperate. And right now, we are. If you’re able to donate, share, or simply connect us to resources that can help us, it means more than we can say. Thank you for helping someone who spent her entire life helping others.