A staggering moment: American literacy pioneers Ruth Colvin, then 105, and Geneva Hayden then 89, at the Light a Candle for Literacy parade and festival, four years ago. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current

Twenty years after Geneva Hayden and her closest allies willed it into being, the Light A Candle For Literacy parade on Saturday will move to an even higher profile location, starting at noon at the Beauchamp community library on South Salina Street and then traveling more than a half-mile to the festival’s new home at the McKinley-Brighton Elementary School.

Accompanied, of course, by a firetruck.

You are absolutely invited — the South Side festival runs from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. — particularly since the organizers are seeking larger awareness and support for what they see as a project of lasting civic meaning:

Their organization is now the owner of the landmark Hayden family home on Midland Avenue — the fire-damaged house where Hayden, with the support of her husband Al, ignited a passionate and intimate effort to ignite childhood literacy in the heart of Syracuse, a city that is at the heart of a global literacy movement.

“I still believe in books,” said Sue Wood, a longtime organizer and close friend of Hayden’s, reflecting on how a child’s life can be completely transformed by reading.

Author Tia Love, at a Light A Candle for Literacy festival and parade. Credit: Courtesy Camille Coakley

The festival was founded in 2006 by Hayden, working closely with librarian Karen Norton. After a hiatus, it was rekindled after the pandemic through the passion of such true believers as Ed Kochian, former Onondaga County deputy county executive. It still serves as a rallying point and reminder for just how much reading matters, though Kochian said the McKinley-Brighton campus offers the chance to make this festival the best and largest ever.

Wood recalls how Hayden saw the event as a perfect marriage: The children of the South Side deserved a parade, and what better way to fire up their imaginations then through a festival featuring writers and illustrators, often from the same community — with their own artistic lives transformed by literacy.

The importance is illustrated by the commitment of Camille Coakley, Wood’s daughter and the festival coordinator. She helps plan everything through meetings by video conference from her Atlanta residence with a team of tireless volunteers — before Coakley, raised on the South Side, travels to Syracuse every year for the festival itself.

“The parade is growing,” said Coakley, who noted the McKinley-Brighton community has created a float, a first for the festival. Many participants will carry placards honoring such giants of the community, lost in recent years, as Jaime Howley, a social worker who was a true believer in Light a Candle, and Rev. Ester Daniels, influential mother of new Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens, and Marjorie Day Carter, the first Black schoolteacher within the Syracuse city schools, who died two years ago — and would have turned 100 this August.

Celebrated children’s illustrator James Ransome will join distinguished Syracuse educator Eva Williams in serving as co-grand marshals. “Literacy has truly been the footprint I want to leave on this Earth,” said Williams, a co-founder of Syracuse Reads+, trying to describe just how much this invitation means — and how much reading, as a tool of critical thinking both for children and adults, matters more than ever amid a digital deluge.

Marva Cook, YMCA community schools program director, was instrumental in shifting the event to McKinley-Brighton from the nearby Brighton Academy — though Cook, like every organizer, also emphasized her gratitude to Brighton. She noted the parade will include a “book worm” that’s at least seven feet long.

As always, the festival — supported by a communitywide reading coalition — will welcome many literacy organizations and children’s authors, signing books.

Children look over free books at the 2023 Light a Candle for Litercy Parade and Children’s Book Festival at Brighton Academy Middle School.

While the purpose is joyful, Cook said the reality is that everything Geneva Hayden attempted to address in an intensely personal and empathetic way remains a burning problem:

“Too many kids simply can’t read.”

Wood, a longtime volunteer, first knew Hayden as a neighbor from the old 15th Ward, a woman who even then had this aura — especially for children — of kindness and concern. Hayden is experiencing health problems that might keep her away from this year’s event, though her daughter Cheryl said it’s possible her mom will stop by for a short time.

Children’s author and Light A Candle volunteer Susan Keeter never forgets the historic moment when the late Ruth Colvin, an international literacy pioneer, attended the renewed festival for the first time in 2022. She served as grand marshal and embraced Hayden — an unforgettable meeting of two literacy giants in Syracuse.

It was a reminder, Keeter said, of how “reading sustains us.”

Four years later, for many organizers, the most exciting element of this year’s gathering is a new collective goal: Seven years ago, fire swept through Hayden’s longtime home at 912 Midland Ave. That was the origin point for Light A Candle, the legendary spot where Hayden first began reading on her front porch with little children who had little else to do once they were done with school.

“We could have sold it,” Hayden’s daughter Cheryl said of the house. “But we wanted it to stay what my mother always wanted it to be.”

Not long ago, the Hayden family “gifted” the house to the Light A Candle organization. The dream now is to restore and transform it into a permanent literacy center on the South Side. Organizers say the need is urgent: They’ll tell you how studies reveal the practice of simply reading for pleasure among children is plunging, while test scores show too many children in Syracuse still struggle to read.

On the city’s South Side — and in any neighborhood of economic struggle — the consequences can be shattering.

Children’s author Lou Carol Franklin, a Light A Candle volunteer and a close friend of Hayden’s, called the imperative of reading “a big part of what our community needs.” She witnessed Hayden’s great gift, the ability to look out at a child walking home from school, head bowed in sadness, and to “let them know there are people who care for them, a lifestyle that can protect them and sustain them, and that if we can just be kind to each other, they can grow up to be a factor for others in this community.”

How important is reading? If you rarely travel, if your childhood world essentially consists of the smattering of city blocks surrounding your home, then the mysterious mental tumblers set into motion whenever you lose yourself in a book — the dreams and hunger about things that you have never seen — can eventually throw open a gateway to the world, Franklin said.

Geneva Hayden, at left, and Ruth Colvin at the Literacy Book Festival in 2024. Colvin died two months later, at 105. Geneva’s husband Al is to her left. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current

“Pick up a book,” she said, “and you can go anywhere,” which is the passion, work and legacy of Geneva Hayden.

If you believe in the same thing and want to help, we’ll see you Saturday.

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Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Central Current. He has been an Upstate journalist for more than 50 years. He held his first reporting job as a teenager and worked for newspapers in Dunkirk, Niagara...