Readingmania

Former First Lady Barbara Bush did it. So has her son, Texas Gov. and presidential hopeful George W. Bush, California Gov. Gray Davis, Gen. Colin Powell, dozens of Hollywood stars and myriad corporate czars.

Now you can add to the list Robert “The Brown Bomber” Thompson, the high-flying pro wrestling ruffian who would just as well leap off ring posts and crush your skull as shake your hand.

There he was Wednesday, sitting among a bunch of third-graders at Arthur Hapgood Elementary School in Lompoc, reading from James Howe’s “I Wish I Were a Butterfly.” Aloud.

Joining Thompson for this literacy moment were Donovan “Fun Boy” Morgan, the brash rule-breaker, and Vinny “The Gigolo” Massaro, the Italian masked menace who stressed in broken English why reading is fundamental.

Move over, Mister Rogers. Everybody seems to be reading to schoolchildren these days, even professional brutes who are usually parading in skintight Speedos. And as more people jump on the literacy bandwagon for good reason, some are also reaping a collateral benefit in good public relations.

“It’s a wonderful photo opportunity,” said Carolyn Garrett Cline, an expert on public relations at the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

Cline and others credit former First Lady Bush with popularizing the act of reading to children during the early 1990s, when she made literacy an issue. Her reading forays--from classrooms to airwaves--earned her the name of “America’s reading grandmother.”

Since then, plenty of politicians and others have followed suit. A sampling:

* Former Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Ruben Zacarias, ousted after a bitter political fight, spent part of his last day on the job Jan. 14 by reading Dr. Suess’ “Green Eggs and Ham” to a kindergarten class at Breed Street Elementary School.

* To underscore his proposal to overhaul the Head Start program, Texas Gov. Bush swung by Bennett-Kew Elementary School in Inglewood last September to read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” to kindergartners.

* Actor James Earl Jones kept a roomful of Washington schoolchildren spellbound with his commanding voice last December as he read a book to celebrate a $20,000 donation by Bell Atlantic Yellow Pages.

* First Union Bank announced what it called the nation’s “largest face-to-face corporate literacy event” by pledging to donate 75,000 Dr. Seuss books and sending volunteers to read in 75,000 classrooms, from London to Florida. Powell, hero of the Persian Gulf War, helped kick off the campaign.

Experts say there’s good reason that the public pays attention: People are worried that children can’t read.

Literacy and reading programs have shot to the top of almost everyone’s agenda on the strength of dismal news from standardized tests--such as the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which showed that only a quarter of fourth-graders were proficient in reading.

The results have inspired an army of parents, corporate leaders, retirees and others to go back into America’s classrooms, pick up books and read to elementary students. The overwhelming number do so without fanfare.

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The trend hasn’t been lost on some who do welcome the spotlight. For instance, the folks at All-Pro Wrestling, a Hayward, Calif.-based school that trains wrestling wannabes who aspire to the big leagues, like the World Wrestling Federation.

“There’s so much publicity about how no one really knows how to read,” said “Fun Boy” Morgan, All-Pro Wrestling’s marketing director and assistant wrestling instructor. “Illiteracy is becoming more and more of an issue.”

Roland Alexander, a onetime accountant who owns All-Pro Wrestling, said he saw the reading sessions as a way to soften the profession’s rough-and-tumble image, as well as help promote exhibition fund-raising matches his wrestlers put on at schools.

“Wrestling has always been an adult soap opera that has catered to sex and violence,” said Alexander, noting that one television promotion for another wrestling circuit featured an athlete opening a can of beer with his head.

“That’s not the role model I would want for my kids,” he said.

Alexander said that in the past, his wrestlers have appeared at school assemblies to hype fund-raising matches and deliver wholesome messages: “Just Say No to Drugs”; stay in school; obey your teachers; and listen to your parents.

But that got old, he said, and a light went on in September, when some teachers suggested something new. “The kids have heard all that before, why don’t you come and read to them?” Alexander recalled them saying, adding that he heard that Golden State Warriors basketball players were going to classrooms as well.

“If they can pull it off, there’s no reason we can’t,” he thought, “although wrestlers are a different breed than the normal human being.”

Most of the aspiring wrestlers, who range from gas station attendants to teachers, are fully up to the task, he said.

But then there’s All-Pro Wrestling bad boy Jimmy “The Mack Daddy” Ripp.

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable with Jimmy going in there and reading to kids because he’s got missing teeth,” said Morgan, adding that Ripp doesn’t even brush the surviving ones.

Ripp aside, Alexander said the forays have been a hit. Besides reading Dr. Seuss, the wrestlers also tell how literacy helps them with their profession: They need to read contracts, maps leading to the matches, and the TelePrompTer during television tapings.

“The kids just think these guys are gods,” said John McReynolds, a local promoter who booked the classroom visits last September.

“They told the kids, ‘It’s important to read’ and the kids were like, ‘Yeah! I’ll read,’ ” he said.

On Wednesday, the students got into the act again, this time helping “The Gigolo” Massaro, a native of Sicily, get through “Amelia Bedelia,” the story of an eager-to-please housekeeper with a knack for reading things quite literally.

Third-grade teacher Noelle Barthel said later that she didn’t know whether Massaro’s stumbling over the words was real or a clever act to get her students involved. Whatever the case, they were impressed, even if they didn’t quite grasp the meaning of Massaro’s professional moniker.

“We’ve got to tell our moms the gigolo came today!,” Barthel quoted her students as saying.

Cline, the USC public relations expert, said having hulking wrestlers read to the children is a brilliant stroke. “It’s the gentle giant idea.

“I don’t want to know what [Minnesota Gov.] Jesse Ventura reads,” she said, “but [pro wrestling] seems to be cleaning up its act and this is one good way to do it.”