At 78, Speed Reader Evelyn Wood Is Still a Quick Study
Despite a crippling stroke and a long recovery, Evelyn Wood, the grande dame of speed-reading, still champions the quicker-is-better cause and dreams of universal literacy.
And at age 78, she still speed-reads.
“I couldn’t stand it if I didn’t speed-read,” she said, speaking in a soft, faint voice from a wheelchair at her daughter’s home in Tucson, Ariz.
Since the 1976 stroke that for years left her unable to walk or talk, “I’ve become more appreciative of reading and what it should do for me,” she said in a telephone interview.
The former Utah schoolteacher, who launched her international network of speed-reading institutes 28 years ago, has contended from the start that anyone can read three to 10 times faster, with practice, while comprehending and remembering more.
‘Can Do Much Better’
“I’m certain a person can do much better reading faster than he can reading slower,” Wood said.
“The most important thing is that people start getting something out of what they’re reading. That’s the thing that started Evelyn in the first place,” said Doug Wood, 83, her husband of 57 years.
Evelyn Wood was seeking neither fame nor fortune when she became interested in speed-reading during the 1940s while doing graduate work at the University of Utah. She discovered that one of her professors could read 6,000 words a minute with “almost 100% comprehension.”
“I was so excited I could hardly stand it,” she recalled. “I started asking questions. I wanted to know what he did and how he remembered.”
Wood taught her first reading class, a remedial course, while working as a high school counselor during the 1950s. Tests administered by the school psychologist showed that she increased students’ reading skills by more than four times in a single year.
Lines for Class
At the same time, Wood was offering speed-reading classes at the University of Utah. The program was so popular that students lined up with sleeping bags the night before to assure themselves a spot in the course.
At the urging of friends and colleagues, the Woods moved to Washington and opened the first Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics Institute in 1959. She was invited three years later to the White House by President John F. Kennedy, a naturally rapid reader, to teach speed-reading to his staff.
She and her husband sold the business in 1966 but she remained active in the program, which continues to bear her name, until her stroke.
Although she has regained the ability to walk, she usually uses a wheelchair to get around the Salt Lake City home she shares with her husband and around-the-clock nurses.
