Annie Plummer; Gave Dictionaries to Children

Annie Plummer, 62, Georgia woman whose decision in 1992 to supply free dictionaries to thousands of young children was emulated in other programs across the country. In 1992, Plummer, a cleaning lady and single grandmother, was observing traffic at a busy intersection near her Savannah home as part of a campaign to install a traffic signal and crossing guard. She began to notice that the schoolchildren passing by lacked a basic necessity: books. “I just couldn’t understand it,” she said. “How can a child go to school without books?” She took $50 of her own money to purchase 30 pocket dictionaries, returned to the corner and started giving them away. Inside each dictionary Plummer, the fifth of 12 children of a truck driver and a housekeeper who dropped out of the ninth grade when she became a mother, wrote this message: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste. I challenge you not to waste yours.” A local news station reported on her generosity, causing a flood of donations that totaled $10,000 by 1996. Over the past eight years she distributed more than 25,000 dictionaries and called herself “The Dictionary Lady.” Similar efforts sprouted in other cities, including Chicago, San Diego and New Rochelle, N.Y. On Thursday after a long illness at her Savannah home.