When his daughter was small, he pretended to read to her, making up his own stories to go with the pictures in the books. As she got older and could read on her own, Gilbert stopped reading to her, afraid she would find out he had been faking.

Gilbert finally signed up for a literacy program and learned to read. “When I caught myself reading for the first time, and having that book talk to me for the first time, I literally shut that book and I went into my bedroom and shut the door, and then I went into my bathroom and shut that door, and I wept,” he said. Although he never fulfilled his dream of reading storybooks to his daughter, he now reads them to his granddaughter.