The second-floor room is unlike any in the library. People read out loud. They talk without whispering. No official asks that they keep it down.

Within this room, a remarkable partnership takes shape, one person guiding another to a new way of life.

While we like to think of profound change as dramatic, it's more often a series of choices and small steps that eventually lead to someplace unexpected.

And that's what happens each Thursday in this room at Multnomah County's Central Library. People are learning to read.

A college professor works with a cook who's memorized recipes well enough to work in the kitchen. But he can only read a few words on the page and tells no one of his struggle.

A retired librarian works with a recent immigrant who needs to understand the questions she must answer correctly when she applies for citizenship in the country she now considers home.

A woman studies a drawing of a refrigerator, learning words representing butter, cheese and eggs.

"It takes courage to come forward," said Lisa Regimbal, the library's adult literacy coordinator.

***

The students don't want to share their names with a visitor. There remains some sense of shame in not being able to read.

"It's hard work," Regimbal said. "Those of us who can read forget the struggle it took when we were learning as children. Imagine what it is like as an adult."

The free program, which began last year at the downtown Portland library, draws 160 people each week for sessions that last more than two hours.

They come for different reasons: Some want to apply for a job that requires they read. Others want to earn a high school equivalency degree or take simple pleasure in reading a book.

"We've had people who managed to get by for decades," Regimbal said. "Now they want to connect to the bigger world that comes through words."

Arnold Vinnard saw a notice the library was looking for volunteer tutors and decided to check it out.

"Easy customers," he said. "I love this."

During the past few months, Vinnard has helped a man who brought in his ballot and wondered how it worked, a high-educated man from Iran who struggles with English and an 18-year-old woman who's reading out of a book appropriate for a first-grader.

"I get as much out of this as any of these people," Vinnard said. "It's a wonderful feeling to watch someone gain confidence."

Regimbal said people who want to volunteer must apply, be vetted, which includes a background check, and then spend time observing before they are matched with a new reader.

"The program is learner-centered," she said. "There is no curriculum we march through. We learn their goal and then help them obtain it. Some people struggle with letter sounds and we work on phonetics. Others are fluent in their home language, but English is a mystery."

***

Doris Fong volunteered to teach in the program after meeting a stranger who asked her for help using an ATM machine.

"She could not read anything," Fong said. "None of the instructions. She only knew numbers, and I had to help her. I made sure the bank knew what I was doing so they didn't think I was taking advantage of her."

Once Fong was accepted as a volunteer, Regimbal matched her with a 73-year-old woman who had moved to Portland from China to be with her daughter. Educated in the United States, the daughter works as an accountant in a Portland hospital.

"My student knew no English," Fong said. "She has become a very advanced student. She wants me to challenge her and she listens to tapes and does work on her own at home."

Fong once taught high school in the Portland area and later worked as a librarian.

"I was around words my entire life," she said. "Like everyone, I took them for granted. Imagine what it's like to go to a doctor's office and not be able to read instructions."

Volunteering, she said, has changed her life.

"What I get to watch is people blossom," she said. "It's what a gardener experiences. A seed is planted. Nothing seems to happen, and then everything changes."

Regimbal, the library's adult literacy coordinator, said the program can always use more volunteers.

"They make it happen," she said. "My dream is simple. A person learns to read and gets a job they want, they recognize a receipe, they read an article or a book to a grandchild. I want them to look at words on a page and say they know what they mean. That's freedom."

--Tom Hallman Jr.

thallman@oregonian.com; 503 221-8224

@thallmanjr