LINDEN – The Linden Rotary Club is on a mission to supply all third graders in Marengo County with a dictionary all their own.

Rotary President Rob Wynn and several other Rotarians were at John Essex High School Monday to hand out dictionaries to the third-grade students there.

“We’re making this an annual project so that every child will have a dictionary,” Rotarian and State Farm Agent A.J. McCampbell said.

Wynn, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Linden, explained to the group of 18 students the importance of the books they held in their hands.

“My father once said ‘if you can let me learn 15 words in anyone’s profession, they’ll think I’m one of them,” he said. “Mr. (Luke) Hallmark got to be superintendent because he learned words. Mr. McCampbell got to be an insurance agent because he learned some words. We all got where we are because we learned a lot of words.”

“(Dictionary) will help you be a success in life,” Wynn said.

After handing out the books, McCampbell and the other Rotarians helped the students learn to use the dictionaries by looking up the words ethics and moral with them.

Before dismissing the students, Marengo County Superintendent Luke Hallmark had a few closing remarks for the young learners.

“I know sometimes y’all look at us and think we came from a different place,” he said. “But I came from Uniontown, a small town just down the road. I didn’t have a lot of things, but I got to do a lot by reading. I could tell people I had been to Egypt to see the pyramids or I had been on a safari in Africa. I had been all those places by reading.

(Reading) will take you to where Michael Jordan wa born. It will take you to the gym where he used to play basketball. You young girls, it will take you to where Miss America was from,” Hallmark said.

He encouraged the students to put their name and phone numbers in the dictionaries and “take them home.”

“The best thing you can do for us,” Wynn said, “is take them home and use them.”