By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 22, 2006; DZ01
Isaac Love was raised to work -- hard, manual labor -- which is what he did for nearly 30 years, from the day he dropped out of high school until the morning in January 2002 when he slipped from a garbage truck and fell beneath its wheels.
His right leg was instantly crushed below the knee. He lost a lot of blood. He looked up at the sky and saw "not stars, but, like, flickers." He thought, "Lord, don't let me die."
Paramedics appeared with an oxygen mask, and he woke up in the hospital. A doctor was saying, "I'm sorry, Mr. Love, but we had to take your leg."
Just like that, Love's days as a laborer were over. At the age of 42, the divorced father of two teenagers had to make new plans for his future. He decided to start by going back -- to get his high school diploma.
On Saturday, Love, now 46, will don a cap and gown and walk across the stage in the auditorium of the University of the District of Columbia as one of a growing number of D.C. residents earning their general equivalency diplomas. The number of GED graduates has more than doubled since 2000, thanks in part to expanded literacy programs and adult education classes funded through Mayor Anthony A. Williams's Lifelong Learning Initiative.
Last year, 569 District residents received GEDs, up from 281 five years earlier. So far this year, 504 have passed the GED exam, an eight-hour marathon of multiple-choice questions that covers the full range of high school learning, from algebra to science to nearly 500 years of U.S. history.
Yet the number of graduates, although rising, remains low in a city where an estimated 47 percent of adults have not finished high school and 38 percent, according to a new national study, read at or below a fourth-grade level. In its forthcoming annual report, the D.C. State Education Agency estimates that 150,000 adults in the District need help with basic literacy.
Fewer than 70,000 of those people, however, "have indicated any desire to take advantage of [literacy] services if offered and easily available," the report says. Still, most programs have long waiting lists. Despite the addition of thousands of city-funded slots under the mayor's initiative, the report says, just over 7,000 people are enrolled in literacy and adult education programs.
"On the one hand, we're doing great. We've doubled the number of people we're serving, including the number of GEDs. But that number is a drop in the bucket compared to the need," said Connie Spinner, the city's director of literacy programs.
District officials are trying to boost those numbers by reaching out to immigrants, single mothers, grandparents raising grandchildren, criminal offenders returning to the community from jail or prison, and young people who have recently dropped out of the District's troubled public schools. Over the past three years, the city has opened literacy centers in public housing projects and recreation centers and hired literacy coaches to coordinate services in parts of town where the need is greatest.
The city also has purchased a mobile literacy center -- a recreational vehicle known as the Trans.form.er and outfitted with desks, computers and literacy software -- dispatching it to community festivals and other events in the city.
One of the most effective programs is operated by Catholic Community Services, formerly known as Catholic Charities, in a renovated church near Gallery Place. Pilar Oberwetter, director of education programs, said her students are primarily black and Hispanic, and many are immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. A growing number are still in their teens, she said, having come to the early realization that "D.C. high schools don't serve the students in the best way possible."
Many students face significant obstacles to learning, such as heavy, inflexible work schedules, patchy English or addiction to alcohol or drugs, Oberwetter said. Even the most dedicated students can study for years before they're ready to take the GED exam. Citywide last year, only 57 percent of those who sat for the test actually passed it.
All of which is a testament to Isaac Love's accomplishment, Oberwetter said. "It's really amazing when a student finishes what they started," she said. "It is really mind blowing."
Love, who lives in Southeast Washington, showed up at Catholic Community Services nearly three years ago with a newly fitted prosthetic leg and a burning ambition to get his diploma. Although he had completed the 11th grade before dropping out of Theodore Roosevelt Senior High School in the 1970s and had years of minimum-wage jobs, testing showed his reading and math skills hovered around the fourth-grade level.
"I could read," Love said. "The basics I was able to deal with." But after years of working with shovels, brooms and tape measures, "paper was a whole new thing. I had to get used to focusing on so many words and paragraphs and sentences."
Raised by attentive foster parents, Love said, he did well in elementary school but began to lose focus in middle school, "when things turned kind of sour with the bullies." He changed schools and entered Roosevelt, where girls and parties were a new distraction. He won promotion to the 12th grade but decided to follow in the footsteps of his foster father, a construction worker.
"It was easy to get a job at the snap of a finger back then," Love said. "I was thinking, 'Get a job. Buy a car. I'm an adult now.' "
Briefly married in his 20s, Love has two sons, Prince Lord, now 20, and Isaac Jr., now 18. He lost touch with them for a time after the divorce and went back to the bachelor's life. He was working for a D.C. staffing agency, temporarily assigned to a commercial garbage truck, when the accident occurred in Bethesda.
"After I lost my leg, I realized what a whole lot of college athletes hear after a big injury: You still have your mind," Love said. "Had I finished that 12th grade, I probably could have carried that to an employer and been more prepared to get an office position."
Love was lucky. Insurance covered most of his expenses, and he won a large jury verdict against the trash hauler, USA Waste of Maryland, in 2004. The case is on appeal.
But Love wanted to work. An insurance case manager provided job leads, "but as hard as I applied, I never got hired," Love said. "So I decided to devote my total concentration to the GED."
It took him nearly 2 1/2 years. He spent a year on reading comprehension. Another nine months were devoted to math. Love went to class for four hours almost every day, then worked on his own for three or four hours more.
"It was like any form of exercise," he said. "That's the way I felt: I'm getting strong mentally working out with these books and skills."
Love sat for the GED three times, earning a passing score on the final section in December 2005. He's already thinking about college, perhaps UDC. In the meantime, he's looking forward to Saturday's graduation ceremony, a rite of passage his sons already have experienced.
"After seeing them graduate," Love said, "I thought it would be interesting to walk across the stage."
