43
Sharon woman inspired many in Nigeria as 'Auntie Martha'
Photo
THEN: Chukwuma Anyanwu leans toward Martha Bruce during a story session in Nigeria in the 1970s. Bruce, a former educator in Youngstown, spent years in Nigeria working with young people. She now lives in Sharon, Pa.
Photo
NOW: Anyanwu shares a book with Bruce, affectionately known as Auntie Martha, in her home today in Sharon, Pa. Anyanwu lives in Philadelphia and spent considerable time finding Bruce for a reunion.
By Jeanne Starmack
SHARON, PA.
Among the avocado and banana trees in Martha Bruce’s big, inviting yard in Owerri, Nigeria, they played and they waited.
One-hundred thirty-five children would gather at 9 a.m. every Saturday. They were divided into three age groups, and when it was time for their group to go into the house, they would eagerly listen to Auntie Martha’s stories.
There were stories from American literature, about a great white whale and a boy named Huckleberry Finn. There was lots of Dr. Seuss.
“Auntie Martha’s Story Time for Children” started in February 1976, a month after Martha Bruce, a former educator in the Youngstown City Schools, arrived in Owerri.
She was fulfilling a wish to spend time in Africa, and she’d accepted a position at a local college, where she was a “teacher of teachers earning advanced certification” — teaching them how to teach English.
The many children she saw in her neighborhood, though, tugged at her instincts.
She reached out to them with fliers in the neighborhood advertising “Story Time.” Admission was a smile.
And instinctively, they were drawn in. Her house became their house, and they came sometimes even when she wasn’t home, braving the grouchy frown of her old steward. He didn’t want them there and often told them to leave — until she set him straight one day.
There was not only reading, but art, crafts, movies, music and dancing.
She taught them to play the organ. “Every child who learned had to teach another child,” she remembered.
There was a surprise, too, every week, and she sent them on a treasure hunt through her house to look for it.
“Sometimes a pen or pencil,” she said. “Sometimes a cookie or candy.”
There were even field trips, and that included first boat rides and first plane rides to the zoo and museums in other towns. Auntie Martha, who was nominated at one point for the UNESCO Prize for Literacy, wanted her story-timers to have a taste of life beyond their neighborhood.
For 61/2 years, they visited her until she left Nigeria to continue her career in the United States. One of them, 7-year-old Chukwuma Anyanwu, lived on the street behind her. “He was the kind of kid, if there was something to explore, he’d explore,” Bruce remembered.
Across her living room on South Irvine Avenue last week, Anyanwu was remembering, too. He’s 40 now, and working as a pharmacist and biomedical researcher in Philadelphia.
Last weekend, he brought his wife, their 5-year-old and 16-month-old sons and his mother across the state to see the woman he knew as Auntie Martha. It was the first time he’d seen her since he was a child.
When he first came to the United States 16 years ago, he lived in Chicago.
“I wanted to find her,” he explained. “And through a family friend, I was able to get her number.
“We exchanged letters,” he continued. “When I moved to Philly, I thought I should try to visit.
“I wanted my kids to see who influenced my life,” he said. That influence gave him a childhood in which he “did it all.”
“Everyone looked forward to Saturday,” he said. “We’d play, play, play, have fun. We asked questions. She read to us, showed us movies and told us about America — a huge, different world to us.”
It was a world that many of the story-timers would eventually set out toward. There are only two colleges in Nigeria, Anyanwu said. America and other English-speaking countries such as Canada and England attract Nigerians who want to go to graduate schools, he said, because they learn English in grade school.
Now, the story-timers message Bruce from all over the world on the Facebook page Anyanwu set up for her.
From her home in Nigeria, where little Chukwuma read and played the organ, to her home in Sharon, where his 5-year-old son Okezika reads full sentences and plays melodies on the piano, Bruce said, there’s a full circle.