Robert Condon; Youth Literacy Advocate

Robert Condon, an auto finance executive who set out to teach children to read by having volunteers read aloud to them with his Rolling Readers USA, has died. He was 40.

Condon died Monday of pancreatic and liver cancer in his Escondido home.

Growing up in East Los Angeles, Condon worried about classmates who graduated from high school but could barely read. The thought of their limited lives haunted him as he earned an economics degree at UCLA and began a successful career in automotive financing.

When he married and had children, Condon believed so strongly in reading to them that he began reading and singing to each when the infant was still the womb. He also began volunteering to read to youngsters at homeless shelters.

In 1991, Condon quit his job to organize and operate the nonprofit Rolling Readers USA.

“If children are read to, they are going to want to do it when they go to school and get really excited about learning to read,” Condon told The Times in 1997. “Reading aloud is the most important thing you can do to develop reading and comprehension skills in kids.”

He started the program in San Diego and brought it to Los Angeles in 1992 after the riots.

Rolling Readers USA has about 40,000 volunteers reading to 300,000 children in 24 states at schools, homeless shelters and public housing complexes.

“We will never know how many children had the wonder of the written word opened to them by Rolling Readers. But Robert always said it was all worth it if just one child was lifted out of the darkness of illiteracy,” Gary Smith, the group’s executive director, said after Condon’s death.

Condon once explained his formula to The Times: one person, a few books and a little time.

“Multiply that by thousands,” he said, “and you have a little magic.”

The program also distributes new hardcover books, donated by publishers, to children three times a year. Often the books are the first that the recipients have ever owned.

Condon also opened Outlet Books to sell children’s books with discounts of up to 90% off the cover price.

Although Condon initiated his program in homeless shelters and housing projects, it was later expanded to schools where children may not have stable homes.

Working couples rarely have the time, energy or interest in reading to their children, Condon said in explaining the expansion of the program. And many modern families neglect books in favor of television and video games.

Condon’s Rolling Readers has received awards from the International Reading Assn. and support from the Washington-based literacy organization Reading Is Fundamental.

Survivors include Condon’s wife, Kitty, three children, his mother, two sisters and a brother.