<< Return to Foundation Focus Page Instilling a Love For Reading: The Patrick and Christine Nolan Advised Fund During the years he taught fourth grade in New Buffalo, MI., Pat Nolan developed an immensely popular reading routine with his students.Several times a week he would spend an hour reading aloud. The children were enthralled by the books he chose and loved having their teacher spend that amount of time reading to them."These guys would start creeping forward as I read," he remembers fondly. "By the end of the hour they were almost sitting on top of my desk." Reading is still vitally important to Nolan, now majority owner and stockholder in the law firm Nolan & Nolan, P.C., and his wife Christine, also a former elementary school teacher who works as a legal assistant for Nolan & Nolan, P.C. The couple's devotion to reading was the force behind their establishment of the " Nolan and Nolan P.C., Patrick and Christine Nolan Fund " to support reading improvement. While it is anything but, Pat Nolan describes the fund as "somewhat selfish" given his family's passion for reading and their desire to pass that love on to others, particularly economically disadvantaged young people. "I read everything that I see. I would love it if everyone would read to their kids every single day. It's free to read to your kids and it means so much to them." This spring, the inaugural grant from the new Advised Fund was used in conjunction with a grant from the Doris and Jack Mixer Fund to support the McMillan School "Adopt-A-Reader" program. Together the funds purchased copies of the book "The Best Place to Read," which were distributed to parents of the almost 250 participating students. The Nolans themselves are products of families that put a premium on reading and on education in general. Pat's parents, Martin and Mabel, raised nine children and put them each through college. Christine's mother, Carolyn Callendar, is also a former school teacher. Her father, the former Howard Callendar, was a sales executive. Pat and Christine are the parents of four children: Michael, 30, a Ferris State University graduate and now a golf pro in Ft. Lauderdale , Fla. ; Geoffrey, a Western Michigan University graduate who is now an attorney and stockholder in Nolan & Nolan, P.C.; Sarah, 23, also a WMU graduate who is on the sales force of MI-Biz West; and Amanda, 17, a senior at Mona Shores High School who teaches dance at Diane's School of Dan ce and is a member of the Mona Shores High School dance team. "Our kids all loved it when we would read to them," Nolan says. "We could read the same book 20 times in a row and they wouldn't care. They just loved to hear the story." << Return to Foundation Focus Page