Jamie Back, a former member now in Washington D.C. e-mailed
inquiring if anyone from HLAK would be at the HLAA Convention. Information
was shared but the connection wasn’t made however it was good to hear from
Jamie.
Darlene and Norbert
Burzynski and Carlene Ballard
were volunteers for a University
of Louisville Program in
Audiology class on June 20, 2011. Dr. Jill Preminger said volunteers received 4-weeks of
communication classes in one day- at no charge with a free lunch! This class was recorded and will be used to
educate audiologists about providing effective services for people with hearing
loss.
Carla Trivedi, Mary Ellen and
Charlie Hamlet, Neils Ewing and Ron and Jean Haynes were also volunteers for a
University of Louisville Program in Audiology class on June 27 2011. Dr. James Greer Clark, a professor with the University of Cincinnati was teaching an audiologic counseling class. He said that “one
of the biggest eye openers for aspiring clinicians was to hear first hand
stories of the impact of hearing loss from those living day to day with the
loss. I would love to provide a similar
experience for the Louisville
students.” What a great opportunity!
John Perry has been in the Alaskan wilderness for
ten days, having arrived just a few days before an earthquake of magnitude 7.2 struck the Pacific Ocean 101 miles east
of Atka, Alaska. The quake was felt through the central Aleutians and as far east as Dutch Harbor and
Unalaska. A second earthquake of the
same magnitude hit in the same vicinity and at the same depth a half-minute
later. We’ll definitely have to hear
about his trip!
Mimi Kiley, a former member was back in town for a short
visit. She has completed her studies
graduated and soon, seeking employment in Illinois!
Mimi is vice-president of the Hearing Loss Association of Chicago - Lincoln Park.
Donna
Kiley’s smiling
face has been missed this year; her parents have had ongoing medical
problems. Please keep the family in your
prayers.
Becky Crawford’s daughter, Ellen is safe in the U.S.A. Several members were in Bardstown for the
HLAKH meeting and she joined us at BJ’s.
The last earthquake did not affect her area in Japan and the
radiation winds blow away from them!
When she leaves the States, she will be headed for Belgium, to begin her new job.
If you
enjoy the Member News, please share your news with us!!!
Send to HayJean@insightbb.com or patif50@insightbb.com
Becky Crawford, HLAK member and Bardstown KYHome Chapter Steering Committee member
will celebrate her 70th Birthday on July 9. We all send her our very
best wishes.
Please
share your birth date with us in the HLAK Newsletter.
Send to HayJean@insightbb.com or patif50@insightbb.com
Member Spotlight - Have You Met
Floyd Ventress Wilkins?
You
may know him as the guy with the smile for everyone or maybe just by
“Vennie”. Vennie and his lovely wife,
Jeanie are new members of the Hearing Loss Association of Kentuckiana and
Vennie has an amazing story to be told.
On
June 10, 1945, Mrs. Nachel Wilkins of Caneyville,
Kentucky was walking on a nearby
hill and fell. The traumatic fall caused
the six months pregnant Mrs. Wilkins to give birth to her baby. Without delay, mother and baby were
transported seventy miles to the emergency room of the Louisville General Hospital. The baby weighed in at three pounds and it
was touch and go to stabilize him. This
day was the start of the life of Floyd Ventress Wilkins.
Floyd was transferred to the Kosair Crippled
Children’s Hospital on Eastern Parkway in 1946. While at Kosair, he became a patient of Dr.
Charlie Woods, who watched over him for the next twenty years. In 1947, Floyd was diagnosed with cerebral
palsy which was probably the result of his traumatic and early birth. CP is a disorder of movement, muscle tone or posture and is linked to
hearing and speech problems. In the summer
of 1952, Floyd started hearing and speech classes at Indiana
University in Bloomington, Indiana. He continued these classes at the Louisville Kosair Hospital
from 1952 through 1959.
Floyd, now
called Vennie, started his deaf-oral education at the George H. Tingley Elementary School at 1311-1317 South Preston Street
(1952-1959). He advanced to the Edward Gottschalk
Junior High School at 4615 Taylor Boulevard
(1959-1963) and then to Louisville
Male High School at the corner of Brook and Breckinridge
Streets (1963-1966). In 1961, Dr. Woods
performed surgical reconstruction on his Gracilis and Sartorius
muscles to improve a weak foot and his balance.
This surgery was done at the St.
Joseph Hospital
at Preston Street
and Eastern Parkway.
During elementary school
(1953-1957), eight year old Vennie began an exciting adventure. In 1953, he became active with the Kentucky
Society for Crippled Children (KSCC) when his application was submitted for the
1954 Kentucky Easter Seals poster child.
The National Society for Crippled Children had launched the Easter Seals campaign to raise money for
its services. Vennie
attended day camp for crippled children at Woodcock Hall at 3126 Frankfort Avenue. The day camp was sponsored by Easter
Seals. He also attended Camp Koch in
Tell City, Indiana for two weeks in August. This camp was also for crippled
children. Vennie was selected as the
1954 poster child from the applications.
His first poster appeared on the 1952-1953 KSCC Annual Report.
1954 was a busy year! Vennie helped promote the Easter Seal
drive. He attended the day camp at
Woodcock Hall sponsored by KSCC and the area Kiwanis clubs. The campers were guests of the United States
Coast Guard Auxiliary who hosted an Ohio River
day cruise for them. In August, Vennie
received the first ticket to the all-star high school football game played at
DuPont Stadium with proceeds going to KSCC.
The most exciting adventure was in September at the first WHAS Crusade for
Children. It was telecast from the Memorial
Auditorium, featuring Pat O’Brien as the celebrity guest. Vennie and his friends with the Day Camp
Rhythm Band played during the marathon and the Crusade raised more than
$156,000 that first year. Vennie was
selected to be the 1955 Kentucky Easter Seal Poster Child and his poster
appeared on the 1953-1954 KSCC Annual Report.
In 1955, Vennie enjoyed his
second two weeks in August at Camp
Koch. In October, he was the grand marshal of the
Shelbyville Easter Seal parade.
In 1956, Governor A. B.
Chandler signed a 25 year lease for 106 acres of General Butler
State Park to Kentucky
Society of Crippled Children, for a residential camp for physically handicapped
children. Vennie and his mother were
invited to Frankfort
to witness the signing.
In 1957, Vennie was invited
to participate in the presentation of a set of film strips and slides on “A
Child’s Road to Independence”
from the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority to the Louisville Free Public Library.
After
high school, Vennie enrolled as a drafting student at Jeffersontown Vocation
School at Blue
Bird Lane. That same year (1967) he went to work as a
map drafter for Park Aerial Surveys Inc. at 5514 Poplar Park Boulevard. On May 13, 1999, he retired from Park Aerial
Surveys with 32 years of service.
Vennie’s
mother, Kathleen H. Wilkins passed away January 7, 1991 at the Sts. Mary and Elizabeth Hospital of heart failure. She was 64 years old.
On
October 14, 2000, Vennie and Jeanie Moser Cusack married at Louisville Baptist
Deaf Church
at 1733 Bardstown Road. In July 2009 they moved to the Masonic Home
Apartments for Senior Citizens on Frankfort
Avenue.
Upcoming Events
July
4, 2011 – Monday – 10:00 A.M.-4:00 P.M.
Louisville Baptist Deaf Church – Picnic at Tyler Park, Please, bring any dish,
snacks and soft drinks and your own chairs.
Bring $2 for meats that LBDC will provide
July
12, 2011 – Tuesday – 6:30 P.M.
HLAK July meeting – “Open Mike”
discussion on the 2011 HLAA National Convention with members who attended.
July
25, 2011 – Monday – 6:30 P.M.
Hearing Loss Association of America Kentucky Home
Chapter July meeting will be a potluck picnic in Bardstown. See further details below in this newsletter.
August 9, 2011 – Tuesday – 6:30 P.M.
HLAK August meeting will be Dawn Gee and Jim
Sears from WAVE-TV
September
13, 2011 – Tuesday
HLAK September meeting will be a Welcome Reunion
Picnic at E.P. Tom
Sawyer State
Park, Louisville. Details to follow; please
reserve the date.
October
11, 2011 – Tuesday – 6:30 P.M.
HLAK October meeting will
have Martha Newman with The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts speak. Her
presentation will be on the Access Services at the center.
November
8, 2011 – Tuesday – 6:30 P.M.
HLAK November meeting - How to
finance hearing aids.
2011 KY STATE FAIR August 18-28 We need your help!
If
you care about reaching out to those with hearing loss who do not yet have all
of the information they need, please join with us. We have already been busy planning
to support the booth focusing on hearing health. Please mark your calendars and
invite friends and family to volunteer with you. In addition to free entrance
and parking, we will be sharing knowledge that we have gained through personal
experience. The booth will again be located on Main Street and will feature the
wonderful assistive listening devices and educational items as well as phones
from the KY Telecommunication Access Program’s (TAP.) New sponsor, Sprint
Relay, will be participating along with the KY Commission on Deaf and Hard of
Hearing and the Heuser Hearing Institute which will provide free hearing
screenings daily.
There
will be online signups which will hopefully simplify the process of scheduling
for eleven days worth of needed coverage. Some annoying advertisements will pop
up which can be closed off and you will be able to proceed to select your
slots. The address is www.mysignup.com where you will
enter my email address, PaulaEsterle@insightbb.com.
You will then click on “Hard of Hearing Volunteers,” Or you can contact us
directly at PaulaEsterle@insightbb.com
339-8037, or RonHaynes@insightbb.com
515-3762. Thank you for contributing to this important outreach!!
2011-2013 HLAK Officer Slate
We will vote at the August
Meeting on our slate of new officers who will take office at the September
Meeting. I am still working on
finalizing who will be the Treasurer.
The announcement will be made at the next meeting. The new President will decide who will be the
chair of the various committees: social, membership, and so forth.
The Slate is as follows:
President: Elizabeth
Landers
VP: Bob Kuprion
Secretary: Melissa McRoy
Treasurer: Kay Calvert
Respectfully submitted,
Theresa Kidwell
Chair of Nominating
Committee
Kentucky Home Chapter of Hearing
Loss Association of America
Meets
at 6:30 p.m. on the fourth Monday of most months at the Nelson County Public
Library, 201 Cathedral Manor, Bardstown, KY 40004. The meetings are free and open to the public.
Weather cancellation will be via web site: http://www.hearinglosskyhome.org/
, e-mail and WBRT Radio Bardstown. In general, if schools would be closed
under the current conditions, the program would normally be postponed. Questions regarding upcoming meetings or the
association can be directed to information@hearinglosskyhome.org
or 502-349-6792.
Kentucky
Home Chapter Potluck Picnic 6:30 p.m. Monday, July 25, 2011 at the Nazareth Gazebo-Grounds (near Bardstown, Ky.)
Meat, drinks and paper products furnished. Please bring a covered dish. Please
call 502-348-8070 or to sign up!
Directions:
If
you come I-65, exit hwy
245/Bernheim/Bardstown, This is the first exit past the rest area. Turn left
and go east. Approximately 15-20 minutes you will pass two stop lights, cross a
railroad track, pass the third stop light and then turn left at the fourth stop
light. This street is North Third
Street. Travel North, pass one stop light and
watch for the Nazareth
entrance on your LEFT. Turn left, stay on the road driving into the Nazareth
Complex until you come to a Guard House on your left. The road will circle
around a statue and go to your right, then curve to your left. You can see the
Gazebo over to your left. Follow the signs to PARKING behind a low building on
your left. This is where you can park and walk over a short distance to the
Gazebo.
If
you come out from Louisville
via the Bardstown Road
(Louisville Road OR US31E, all the
same road), you will turn right into the Nazareth Complex and follow the above
directions to the Guard House on your left and on to the Gazebo.
Bowling Green Chapter
of Hearing Loss Association of America
No Meeting in July
August Meeting Will be “Hearing Loss 101” at its 4:30
Tuesday, August 2. This is a film discussion meeting that will address
“Whatever you wanted to know about hearing loss but were afraid to ask.”
Meetings are free and open to the public, will be
held at 4:30 p.m. at the Health and Wellness
Center at Greenwood
Mall. Meetings will be real-time captioned by Barton-Thomas
Reporting.
Hearing Loss Association is a self-help organization
dedicated to education, advocacy and support for people who do not hear well
and those around them.
2011 HLAA Convention News 
Karen Lichtefeld, Melanie
Magruder, David Bayersdorfer, Theresa Kidwell, and Marilyn Fenwick and Carlene
Ballard (both with the Bardstown Chapter of the HLA), and Wilma Wright with
KCDHH attended the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) Annual Convention
in Washington DC. The convention was held at the Hyatt Regency
Crystal City
at Reagan National Airport
June 16 through June 19, 2011. We all had a great time learning about new
devices for the hearing loss in the exhibit hall, attended a captioned (at
least six caption machines) performance of Wicked at The Kennedy Center, and
going to various workshops to learn new things. Several of us will be sharing
what we learn at the next meeting of HLAK on July 12th. Please come
join us at the meeting and let us share with you what we learned in Washington DC.
Submitted by Theresa Kidwell
At the performance of Wicked
– Theresa Kidwell, Karen Lichtefeld, Carlene Ballard, Wilma Wright and Marilyn
Fenwick - left photo
Hospital
Kits for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
A hospital experience is
stressful for everyone but for the deaf and hard of hearing, miscommunication
can prevent a good outcome and recovery.
Many have bad experiences at hospitals and other health care situations. The following appeared as part of a
discussion on the HLAA-LeadersList@yahoogroups.com
to promote forming communication information/kits for hospital stays. Much of the old “Hospital Kit” information
is out dated.
“It's
interesting that you mention your hospital experience when going bilateral
(with CI's I presume). I actually wrote about this in my new book,
"Listening Closely: A Journey to Bilateral Hearing". I got a good tip
from a fellow-HLAA member that NYU
Medical Center
would provide someone to accompany me into the operating room if I requested
it. Even though this person was NYU's resident interpreter, her role was to be
my "communications assistant" - and she also arranged for all my
communication needs during my hospital stay: sign over the bed, notation in my
chart, alerting the nursing station, and assisting me in the OR and the
recovery room - taking off my CI after I was put under, and putting it back on
in the recovery room before I woke up. And holding my hand in the OR too! I
called her the "guardian angel of people with hearing loss" at NYU!
And she's one of the people listed in the Acknowledgements at the back of the
book.
I'm convinced that this should be the standard of care for any patient with
hearing loss - that the hospital provide a "communications assistant"
to ensure that the staff is prepared to give appropriate care to the patient.
It really shouldn't be up to the patient to do this educating - it should be
the other way around.
And I have to add that the reduction in stress was ENORMOUS!! That has to
impact health and recovery.” Arlene
Romoff
COMMENTS FROM A CART OPERATOR
- continuing
series in Deaf Digest
"What is the difference between a
post-production captioner and a realtime captioner? Don't all captioners do the same
things?"
Some people do not realize
that the captioners who caption the "live" television shows use
totally different skills than those who caption programs that are
prerecorded. These different types of captioners
are not interchangeable.
A realtime captioner must
be able to write at speeds over 200 words per minute, while an offline
captioner, one who does post-production captioning, must be excellent at
positioning, placing, and timing the captions.
Most realtime captioners
use a steno machine to produce their captions, while a post-production
captioner or caption editor will use a standard computer keyboard. People doing
post-production captioning may use scripts or transcripts that have previously
been prepared by a transcriber.
Many of the captioners who
do post-production captioning do their work at the captioning company that they
work for, while most realtime captioners work from home and caption the shows
remotely.
Many offline captioners
work set shifts, while realtime captioners are usually assigned to cover
specific shows.
As you can see, totally
different training is required for these two types of positions. Most realtime captioners have trained to be
court reporters, while many offline captioners have pursued some type of
general studies emphasizing subjects like English or history.
Online Hearing Test
Here
online hearing test that looks interesting and seems to do a decent job of
hearing screening. Note that none of
these online tests is a replacement for testing by a qualified hearing
professional, but they can provide an indication that you might want to have a
more thorough test. Check it out at:
http://www.directhearingaids.co.uk/index.php/online-hearing-test/
NYPD Cops with Hearing Aids File
Discrimination Complaints with EEOC
The
New York Times is reporting that two former police officers with hearing aids
have filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC) against the New York Police Department (NYPD). The officers
were forced to retire because of their hearing aids. The article states that
new officers with diagnosed hearing loss are not allowed to join the NYPD, but
that existing officers who were diagnosed with hearing loss could wear a
hearing aid, although this policy was informal. In at least two cases, the NYPD
even reimbursed the officers for the hearing aids. In late 2009, according to
the Times article, the NYPD began to rigorously enforce its ban on hearing
aids. The policy forced some officers to retire and other officers with hearing
aids to remove their hearing aids before going on duty. http://www.hearingreview.com/news/2011-06-21_01.asp
Lipreading Tales
One may say I am a poor
lipreader but I get by. Get by? As if
one needs to smile, use body language and fake understanding by head nodding -
and still do not understand what is being said.
A Lipreading Problem: What
did that person say? You thought a
fellow employee said: Fischer (a name of
another employee). You are puzzled
because there is no one at work with the Fischer last name. You then realize the fellow employee actually
said: Victor (an employee you know that
works in the same department as yours)
Hearing Loss
Association of America
(HLAA)
HLAA, headquartered in Bethesda MD,
is the nation’s largest organization for people with hearing loss. The HLAA
exists to open the world of communication for people with hearing loss through
information, education, advocacy and support.
HLAA is a 501c3 non-profit corporation and offers tax exempt status to
all local affiliates.
Want to Join Hearing
Loss Association of America
(HLAA)
You can join HLAA online at http://www.hearingloss.org/ (click on
Join/Membership). If you prefer, you can
get the form online or at a HLAK meeting and mail it in. Annual national membership dues are:
$35 individual, $45 family, $20 student, $60
professional, $50 non-profit and $300 corporate.
Hearing Loss Association of Kentuckiana (HLAK)
HLAK is the local Kentucky/Indiana
chapter located in Louisville,
which is an affiliate of HLAA. Meetings
of HLAK are free, open to the public, and take place at 6:30 P.M. on the second
Tuesday of the month at St. Leonard Elementary School Library, 440 Zorn Ave. Occasionally we meet at other places or at
other times for different activities; any changes will be found in this
newsletter. Real time captioning is used
at the meetings.
Want to Join Hearing Loss
Association of Kentuckiana (HLAK)
HLAK
Annual Chapter dues are $12.00 per individual/household and are due October
1. Participation in chapter activities
is encouraged. HLAK also encourages HLAA
national membership. The HLAK E-mail
Newsletter is available at no cost and can also be found on our website. If you would like to be added to the free
HLAK list serve, to receive periodic email on hard-of-hearing issues, contact Paula Esterle, mailto:Info@hearingloss.org ...
HLAK
Officers/Board:
President John
Perry Info@hearinglossky.org
Vice President/Program Chair Bonny Zilke
Secretary/Membership Merle Williams
Treasurer/Fund Raising Bob Stuckey
Historians Paula Esterle
and Melanie Magruder
Ky State Coordinator Ron
Haynes
Outreach
Coordinator Elizabeth
Landers
Membership
Committee Chair Jean Haynes
Nominations
Chair Theresa
Kidwell
Indiana Rep/Social Chair Karen Lichtefeld
Immediate
Past President Ron Haynes
Web/Newsletter Pat Flaherty
Professional
Advisor Barbara
Eisenmenger
Captioning McLendon-Kogut,
804 One Riverfront Plaza, Louisville
KY 40202
