PENDLETON – Fifth-graders at McKay Elementary School received their own paperback dictionaries Wednesday from the RoundUp Republican Women through the national Dictionary Project.

The project gives dictionaries to fourth- and fifth-graders throughout the country with the help of local community groups. The RoundUp Republican Women learned of the Dictionary Project a year ago and wanted Umatilla County children to get dictionaries.

Mary Lou Fletcher, chairwoman of the Dictionary Project for the RoundUp Republican Women, was at McKay Elementary Wednesday morning to hand out copies of A Student’s Dictionary to students in the fifth-grade classes of Ronda Smith and Brad Baxter.

“You get to keep these as your very own book,” Fletcher told students before instructing them on the proper way to open a brand new paperback book. “You don’t want to crack the binding on a new book.”

The dictionaries not only contain definitions, but also maps of the seven continents, a complete copy of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, and biographies of all the U.S. presidents.

Fletcher had students look up the word “knowledge” and read its meaning.

“We hope these books bring you lots of knowledge,” Fletcher said. “I just hope you have fun discovering all that’s in your new dictionaries.”

The Dictionary Project is a nationwide nonprofit organization that started through the efforts of Annie Plummer, a housekeeper from Savannah, Ga., in 1992. Plummer noticed that many children did not own dictionaries, so she took $50 of her own money to buy 30 pocket-sized dictionaries and handed them out to children walking to school.

By the time Plummer died in 1999, she had given 17,000 dictionaries to children in Savannah. Mary French of Charleston, N.C., took over the project and to date about 1.5 million dictionaries have been distributed for free across the country.

The RoundUp Republican Women hope to donate dictionaries to all fourth- and fifth-graders in Umatilla County. But right now they only have funding for students in Pendleton, Hermiston, Helix and Pilot Rock schools.

The Umatilla County Republican Central Committee donated $1,000 in seed money to get the project started, Fletcher said, and the Friends of the Library donated $500. The Helix Booster Club provided the money for dictionaries for its students.

Fletcher said $45 will provide 30 students with dictionaries.

You can help

The RoundUp Republican Women welcome financial support for the Dictionary Project.

To donate, call Mary Lou Fletcher at 276-9589.

More information at: www.dictionaryproject.org.