“I think that I did it to myself. I played rhythm guitar in a church band. We had our amplifiers sitting right beside us. We wanted to be heard, so they were turned up real loud. All the years of playing in the band, and playing music real loud, certainly contributed to me being hard of hearing.

“Even though I hear some things, I don’t always understand them. Anything that comes over a loudspeaker, or voices at a higher frequency, I have problems understanding.

“One ear is worse than the other, but I wear two hearing aids, mostly when I’m working in the classroom. I’m a substitute teacher. With most of the young girls who have softer, higher voices, it’s hard for me to understand. Sometimes I’m afraid that I’m going to give them permission to do something I’m not supposed to. Because they’ll ask you anything.

“I have struggles, but I can still hear. So it’s not like the struggles that a deaf person has. Everyday conversations with me, one on one, I usually do pretty well. Sometimes I have to ask people to repeat.

“When I’m teaching, I’ll introduce myself to every class using sign language. Most of the students are very accepting. Sometimes they’ll want to go through the alphabet. But there are some who make fun. Sometimes it’s at schools that have deaf ed. I’m surprised they’re not very accepting there, because they have deaf students in some of their classes.

“I’m satisfied with the way I am. It doesn’t bother me that I don’t hear everything. I think there’s a general idea that if you can’t do everything, then you’re not a whole person. I can’t walk like everybody else does, but I can still walk. It doesn’t make me half a person. It just makes me a person who can’t walk real well. Same with my hearing. I can’t always hear real well, but I’m still a person. I should be treated like one.

Creating awareness

“There needs to be greater awareness in the community of those who are deaf or hard of hearing. It’s more about hearing people understanding and being able to communicate with us.

“Hearing people don’t try to be rude. They’ve just never been taught what to do. If I walk into a restaurant and sign, the staff will usually just stand there and stare or start talking. If I was completely deaf, I would have no idea what they’re saying.

“There are ways to communicate with a deaf person, even if you don’t sign. You can grab a pencil and paper, and write quick notes. You can hand them a menu, and they can point to what they want. Another way is an app on my phone called Live Transcribe. It takes spoken words and transcribes them into written English.

“Many deaf people do speak. Some have been deaf all their lives, and never heard their voice. So it may sound weird to you, but don’t let that affect you.

“After my wife passed away, I no longer have anyone at home to practice signing with. So I enjoy going to deaf coffee chats. We gather as a group and we sign. We talk about the news and things going on in our lives. It makes me feel like I’m part of a group of people who understand me, and I understand them.

“We’re trying to make my church, Baytown Revival Center, deaf friendly. Next year, we want to have an ASL musical. There would be music for hearing people. And those on stage would also be signing, so deaf people could enjoy. I’m also hoping to start a Bible study for the deaf.

“This is an ongoing project for me, for people to be aware that there are various ways to communicate with the deaf and hard-of-hearing. It’s something that I’m passionate about.”

— Dennis Voris

For more information on the deaf coffee chats, check the Facebook pages, Deaf Coffee Chat Baytown and Deaf Coffee Chat Mont Belvieu.

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“I’ve played the piano since I was 3 years old and the harp since I was 11. I teach and I love music.

“I was in my early 20s when I started losing my hearing. When you’re a professional musician with a hearing loss, it’s a stigma. So I hid it for a long time, and I learned to read lips very well. Nobody knew until I couldn’t hide it anymore.

“I was at a concert about three years ago, and I broke a string. I had to replace it over intermission. I usually rely on an electronic tuner. But because there were so many people around me also tuning, I couldn’t hear well enough. I asked a violinist friend to help me hear to tune it.

“Then in rehearsals, I couldn’t hear our conductor. I began missing cues. I was completely lost. I had played with several community orchestras. But at this point I had gone back to school and didn’t have as much time. So I pared way down and just played gigs and with Baytown Symphony. Finally, I went to the conductor and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore because I’m deaf. I’m legally deaf. I love this orchestra, but you’d do better with somebody else.’

“At first, there was a process of getting people to believe me. I hadn’t told anybody. I had hid it so well.

“Music is in a different range than speech. It’s still a range that I can hear. There are certain things on the harp that I can’t hear. But I can absolutely hear the piano. I still play weddings and stuff like that. It doesn’t affect that work because it’s just me playing. As long as I play the right notes, I’m good. But playing with an ensemble, I just can’t do. I’ve kept my piano students. But I had to stop teaching voice because I couldn’t hear my students.

“My hearing loss has been gradual over 20 years. I speak ASL and I read lips. So I live inside the deaf community as well, and I’m at peace with that. It’s helped shape the kind of ministry I’d like.

“I hope to become a priest with the deaf community for the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. We don’t have a deaf ministry, so I hope to bridge that gap. It’s God’s redirection for me. I can’t do everything that I used to do. But I still have vital things to offer the world. I feel like this is the way I can do that.”

— Amy Waltz-Reasonover

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“I’ve learned so much about the coronavirus, like how you can carry it without knowing and pass it along to others. That makes it very difficult to see and track.

“My sister, mom and dad all agreed to limit physical contact from different households due to my parents’ age and medical history. That doesn’t mean we won’t hug each other, since you can’t really fight love. But we are very disciplined about it.

“My sister and I talk on the phone to stay updated with daily life, and to make sure we’re both OK emotionally and financially. My mom will come by with her mask on, and sit in her car in my driveway while we visit.

“We’re all doing a lot of video chatting. My parents are both deaf. My mom and I do mostly sign language and lip reading. My dad and I use sign language and talking. It’s a little rough when we’re FaceTimeing, and the signal on our phones is bad. In person, it’s much easier to communicate.

“It’s weird having to be distant, though. We all love each other very much. So it’s heart-breaking knowing you can’t be as close as you want to be. But in the end, it’s not worth the risk of losing someone.”

— John Willey

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Meet Luna, part pit bull and Dalmatian.

“She showed up on our doorstep on the 5th of July a year ago. She had a gash on her leg, so we took her to the vet. We went around asking people and posted a photo of her on Facebook to see if we could find her owner. When we didn’t hear from anyone, we figured since we’ve already got her fixed up we should keep her.

“She’s deaf. We discovered that when we tried to call her, and she wouldn’t look at us. We have two other dogs, and every time we came home Luna would be in her kennel and would still be asleep with the other dogs barking around her. 

“We keep a laser light on hand because she likes to chase it, and it kind of helps get her attention. The biggest challenge is getting her attention when we’re out and about.”

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“I’m a blooming author, I guess you could say. I actually have published two books, the first one in 2017. I had the idea for it back in sixth grade and wrote it then. I kind of lost focus with the project for a bit. Then in 10th grade, I picked it back up and rewrote it to completion, edited it, self-published it, and put it out there. It’s called ‘The Magic Discovery.’ It’s about this girl, and she’s introduced into the world of magic. She discovers that there are two main groups of magicians. They’re neither good nor bad. They just have different beliefs on how magic should be used. And she discovers that there’s a deep divide between them and … sorry, no spoilers. I feel like as I was writing, I was unconsciously creating a metaphor to represent America today, how divided we are.

“My second book, ‘The Fall of Magic,’ is the continuation of events in the first book. And I’m almost done with the third book, which is the final one in the series. It’s about 500 pages, last I checked. The writing itself is done. It’s just the revision that’s taking a while.

“Another thing about my books is that I have mixed elements of Japanese culture within them. I’m studying Japanese at the moment, and I’m going to take a trip to Japan soon. I hope to eventually move to Japan and work there.”

What do your parents think about that?
“They’re probably worried. But they support me.”

— Madilyn Lawrence

Madilyn, 18, is a student at IMPACT Early College High School. She was born bilaterally and profoundly deaf. Her books are available on Amazon.

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• Perseverance helps student overcome deafness

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“I was born bilaterally and profoundly deaf, which basically means that I cannot hear at all in either ear. The only reason I’m able to do this (interview) is because of a special hearing aid. If I took it out, I could not hear anything. Not even if I sat next to a jet taking off.

“My biggest challenge is probably being in crowded environments when there are a lot of noises overlapping. If someone tries to talk to me, it’s so hard to make out what they’re saying. And it’s difficult for me to talk when it’s like that.

“Also, I don’t know if it’s the disability itself or just my personality, but I find it hard to socialize with people my age because I know I’m different. Very different. So I’ve never been the most outgoing person. Walking up to random people and starting conversations, I cannot.

“I don’t know the whole story. I was little, and we don’t talk much about it. But I got my first hearing aid just before I turned 1. It used to be kind of big. I would have to wear this big box on my chest for batteries or something. But it got smaller and smaller through the years, like phones did before they recently started getting bigger again.

“My parents worked with me a lot when I was a little kid. We read together often, and they never gave up on me. I think their perseverance helped make me into who I am today.”

— Madilyn Lawrence

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“When I was a kid, some people thought I was very snobbish because I wouldn’t speak. But it was because I didn’t hear them, and I talked like a baby. So I took speech for a long time. The lady who taught me was from Mississippi. That’s why I have this accent. I’m from Goose Creek, but I have a Mississippi accent.

“Most people don’t know that I’m deaf. I had a sister-in-law who came to me for a haircut one day. Apparently, she said, ‘Don’t cut it real short.’ Well, I thought I heard her say, ‘Cut it real short,’ and that’s what I did. Overall, I did fine cutting hair. It helped that I stood behind people in the chair because then I could watch them in the mirror and read their lips.”

— Betty Arabie

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A childhood accident took her hearing. A determined son and daughter helped return it.

Using sign language, Yolanda Willey says she was about 5 years old when she fell at home. Her memory of the incident is a bit fuzzy — it happened more than 50 years ago — but she recalls blood in her ear and a trip to the hospital.

Through her teenage years, Yolanda was unable to hear or speak. Her challenges only increased as an adult. 

Raising two children with a husband who also was deaf wasn’t easy. Neither was battling breast cancer or seeing her family struggle financially.

But a fighting spirit displayed by Yolanda, her husband, John Sr., daughter, Kathy, and son, John, prevailed.

Today, 57-year-old Yolanda knows what it’s like to hear again: her children’s voices, her dog’s barking, visitors knocking on her door.

The family’s story is one of hard work, determination and love, as well as a lifelong desire to feel normal in a world that often stigmatizes the deaf.

In the beginning

After losing her hearing, Yolanda — an only child — struggled to communicate with her parents, who often spoke Spanish in their Corpus Christi home.

When people talked to her, Yolanda wanted them to slow down so she could try to read their lips and understand what they were saying.

She used hearing aids without much luck. In those days, the clunky devices offered little benefit. So around age 12, it was decided that Yolanda would attend Texas School for the Deaf in Austin.

“She didn’t want to go, and her mom wanted her to stay. It was her stepfather who forced her to go,” says her son, John.

Yolanda stayed at the school until she was 18. The experience allowed her to gain an education in a supportive environment with other boys and girls like her.

When she moved back home, she was armed with a proficiency in sign language.

Dating, then marriage

When she was about 24, Yolanda met the man who would become her husband. 

John Willey Sr. was born deaf. He used hearing aids and learned to speak while growing up among family and friends in Port Aransas.

Yolanda and John were attending a church service when they first interacted. Later at a friend’s home, they enjoyed pizza and visited using sign language.

“My dad kept scooting over to sit by my mom, and everybody was looking,” her son says.

After several years of dating, the couple married in 1989.

Kathy was born in 1990 and John followed two years later. Their parents were relieved when they realized both children could hear. 

But communication in the Willey home was far from simple, even after John Sr. had Cochlear implant surgery in 1995 to improve his hearing.

“When my sister and I were very young, we would hit the ground to get our parents’ attention. Or we would be on the couch and throw our hands up. We just figured out ways to communicate with them,” John says.

Before learning to speak, the siblings were taught sign language by their parents. The main words were mama, dad, hungry and milk. 

After moving from Corpus Christi to Anahuac in the late 1990s, the kids’ speech started to take off as they were around more relatives and began going to school.

As John got older, school presented its own set of challenges.

“There were bullies in junior high and high school. If I remember correctly, I got into 13 fights. The majority of them were because someone was making fun of my parents. My mom was a custodian for Anahuac ISD, and kids would imitate her,” he says.

“Eventually, I learned some self-discipline. I realized that if I continued hitting people I got mad at, it had consequences that could affect my future.”

Down and out

As Yolanda and her husband struggled to find and keep jobs, they were dealt a blow in 2009 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. 

“It was so scary because with something like cancer, we didn’t know which way things would go,” John says.

Kathy and John took turns driving with their mom and dad back and forth to Baytown for chemotherapy and other appointments. After several years of treatments, Yolanda had survived the disease.

“During that time, my dad couldn’t find a job. Then everything at home seemed to go out: the fridge, the dryer, the AC in the living room,” John says. “When you talk about living in poverty, we went way beyond it. That was the hardest time in our lives.”

Realizing they needed to step up to help the family, John and Kathy got grocery store jobs while attending high school.

After Kathy graduated, John continued working at the store, trying to save money to attend college. His dream was to become a firefighter. 

John got the bug when he was about 16, and he was proud to be a junior member of the Anahuac Volunteer Fire Department. After high school, he decided to attend the Firefighter Training Academy at San Jacinto College.

There were some financial roadblocks along the way. But John kept working and his sister helped out when she could. Also, he received a student aid grant that helped him complete the program.

“When I finished and got my certifications, it was the biggest accomplishment of my life,” John says. 

After serving with Anahuac EMS and Cloverleaf Fire Department, John joined Galena Park Fire Department. He recently was promoted to captain.

Financial stability

Having a steady job and salary was important to John, especially as he reflected on his family’s hard times.

“It showed me that anything can happen. You can lose everything. I didn’t want to get back to that rock bottom place ever again,” he says.

To give himself a solid foundation, John purchased a small house. It’s just down the street from his parents’ home, on the same block the family has lived since they moved to Anahuac.

With his own house and other necessities of life in place — plus, his father was set working two custodial jobs at hospitals in Houston — John addressed the one thing that continued to bother him.

“I remember sitting down with my mom one day. I was tearing up. I felt so bad for her. She couldn’t hear anything, and I always had that memory of my sister and I having to beat on the ground to get her attention. I was like, when will we ever be able to holler and she will turn to look at us?” John says.

“Kathy and I talked about how we needed to get mom some hearing aids. She had already been through cancer. We didn’t want her to go the rest of her life without being able to hear us talk.”

The first hearing center they went to didn’t offer much hope. Getting a Cochlear implant was probably out of the question because of Yolanda’s health issues. And the expensive hearing aids the center suggested held no guarantee of helping. 

They applied for a grant to help offset the cost, but the request was denied.

One last hope

Despite a growing sense of defeat, John decided to take his mom to one more hearing center. That’s where they met Ray Covey, a hearing health care practitioner who was born with a severe hearing loss.

“I told him that she’s not just hard of hearing, she’s completely deaf,” John recalls of their 2017 visit to New Sound Hearing Centers in Baytown. “I really didn’t think he could help her. But he said, ‘Miracles can happen.’”

In John’s mind, that’s exactly what occurred.

“He put her in the booth to test her, and once he adjusted everything he said, ‘OK, can you hear me?’ And she had this big smile on her face as she looked right at me. I about cried,” John says.

Ray, who has benefited from wearing hearing aids his entire life, says that while Yolanda is legally deaf, ‘With the hearing aids, I was able to get her some loudness and some understanding.”

When John was presented with the option of purchasing one hearing aid then and the other later, when it might be more affordable, he decided to go all in.

“I was just about to pay off my home, so I wasn’t really prepared to buy everything right then and there. But when I looked at my mom and thought about all that she has gone through, I decided to go for it. I think we bought the baddest, top-of-the-line hearing aids you can find,” John says.

And the results have been life-changing.

After they returned to see Ray to have the hearing aids fitted, John needed to stop by the bank on the way home. To his surprise, after engaging his truck’s turn signal to use the ATM, his mom communicated that she could hear the ticking sound.

“That really surprised me. Because a long time ago when she had some old hearing aids, they really didn’t do anything for her. It was like a big old megaphone, and the sounds would hurt her ears. She could never hear little things like this.”

Yolanda is thrilled not only to hear when family members call out to her, but also the simple things in life.

“In the past when you’d knock on her door, she wouldn’t answer. You’d have to beat on the door or stomp on the porch to make vibrations that she could feel. Now she can hear it,” John says.

“Now she can hear the dog bark. She can hear cars drive by. She can hear kids yelling and playing. She can hear people talking. She can hear everyday sounds. It’s amazing. She’s really happy, which makes all of us happy.”

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“We got her as a puppy, and she was a very bad little girl at first. The people we got her from would not even let her out of the car because they were afraid she’d get loose and run off. But we fell in love with her completely and brought her back home.

“About a week later, I realized something wasn’t quite right with her. She was like a child that no matter what you told her, she was kind of ignoring you. She never would respond to anything we asked her to do until she saw us. So one day I got out my boat horn, and everybody in this place came alive but her. That’s when I knew she was deaf.

“My granddaughter knows some sign language, so she taught me a few signs. We also looked on the internet and came up with our own little vocabulary, you might say, and started teaching her. Through structure and repetition, she picked it up pretty easily. But because she’s deaf and also has limited sight, she’s probably always going to be treat oriented.

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