“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.

The post Opening lines of communication with deaf, hard-of-hearing appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“My hearing loss was a gradual thing. Then two years ago, I lost it completely in my left ear.

“With about 70% hearing loss in my other ear, I really started to feel isolated. I wouldn’t admit it to myself at first, but I was avoiding certain people because their voice was too soft. I stopped going to meetings because I couldn’t hear. Especially when people were wearing masks, it was so difficult to pick up conversations.

“The hardest thing was with my grandkids, the little ones, not being able to understand half of what they were saying. I was missing out on so much.

“I read lips a little bit. And I’ve worn regular hearing aids. But they’re nothing compared to getting this implant. It’s made a huge difference. It provides like the vibrations. So I’m able to distinguish sounds and words and so on. My God, it’s a miracle to me.

“I’ve had it for about six months. Once I get this ear to about 80%, then we’ll go ahead and do the other one. I would recommend it to anybody.

“Throughout all this, the thing that has continued to bring me joy — besides my wife, Raquel — is music. Listening to my albums, picking up the beats, and following along to the words in the songs, has really helped. I’ll put on a favorite album and crank it up. It helps me to concentrate and start recognizing more of the sounds.

“When you listen to music, you really become part of it. To me, it’s the sound, the words, the instruments, the beats, all coming together.

“I’ve loved music since I was a young kid growing up in San Antonio. It will continue to be a big part of my life, until the day I die.”

— Fred Aguilar

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• Music collecting a lifelong passion

The post Implant ‘a miracle’ for music lover appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“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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The post She’s never let hearing loss slow her down appeared first on The Baytown Project.

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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• He was destined to help other people hear better
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The post She gains her freedom from the sounds of silence appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I was premature, a seven-month baby. My mom said that I passed right after birth. My heart stopped, but they brought me back.

“I was in an incubator for 10 days. On the eighth day my heart stopped again, and they had to bring me back again. How long I was out both times, I don’t know. But I do know that lack of oxygen to the brain affects you.

“My hearing was damaged severely, along with my vision. I started wearing hearing aids at age 5. It was a body aid that I had to wear under my shirt. It was very uncomfortable. I hated that thing. I wore it until fifth grade when I got a behind-the-ear aid, which was kind of new technology at the time.

“Kids were tough on me. At school, they would push me down the stairs or slam my head against the wall. I got picked on a lot until I snapped one day and said, that’s it, no more. I got tired of having stomachaches from all the nerves.

“My hearing loss was severe at the time, but now it’s more profound. My right ear is about 95 percent gone as far as understanding. My left ear is about 90 percent gone. But I haven’t let it stop me.

“I guess I was destined to help other people. I’m a hearing health care practitioner. I’ve been in the business 41 years. I love what I’m doing. If you can change someone’s life just by hanging hearing aids on their ears or putting them in their ears, it’s amazing. It’s great to have that God-given talent to do that for another human being. It’s the greatest job in the world.”

The post He was destined to help other people hear better appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“When Jazmin was old enough to start talking but she wasn’t, we thought she was delayed. Finally, we took her to get tested and she had some hearing loss. Then it quickly progressed.

“From age 2 to 3, she went from a slight hearing loss to moderate hearing loss to severe hearing loss. After that, she was in the school system’s deaf education program.

“She can’t talk, but she communicates fine. We use sign language a lot and she has a Cochlear implant, which helps. She has always participated in different activities, like T-ball and soccer, and she played on the softball team at Lee High School.

“Now she’s going to Lee College, trying to take her basics. School has sometimes been a struggle. Being deaf hasn’t been easy. Fortunately, Lee College has been very supportive. She has an interpreter who goes with her to all her classes and the counselors are there for her just about any time she needs something.

“We’re not sure what the future holds, but we have never let her hearing loss prohibit her from doing whatever she wants to do. So, we’re always hopeful.”

— Jesse Garcia

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The post Severe hearing loss hasn’t stopped her yet appeared first on The Baytown Project.