My Connection to Deaf Awareness Week

It's a celebration you may never heard of before.  It's National Deaf Awareness Week, observed each year during the last full week of September.  It focuses on recognizing and promoting the organizations that support the deaf and hard of hearing and to encourage social inclusion. 

St. Mary's School for the Deaf on Main Street in Buffalo has been serving the deaf community since 1853, making it one of the nation's oldest schools dedicated to teaching the deaf.  All this week St. Mary's is observing Deaf Awareness Week with a number of events and activities for the deaf, their families and the public.

Monday night at St. Mary's I was honored to give the opening night speech welcoming the public to the school's open house where tours of the school, the museum and hall of fame were given and yearbooks dating back decades were made available.

I'm the son of deaf parents and walking through the halls of St. Mary's is always an emotional experience for me.  My parents attended school at St. Mary's and to see photos of my parents as kids while in school there brings a lump to my throat.

Our family attended many Sunday masses for the deaf there.  Mass was always followed by breakfast and while the adults socialized the kids would head down to the gym or I have to admit, take unauthorized tours of the school.  So I got to know that place pretty well.  And 50 years later not too much has changed.  I still know my way around the school.

Many people have said it's a huge coincidence that the son of deaf parents would choose radio as a career.  I've always had a huge appreciation for music and radio and it could be that I'm hearing for my parents.  The only way my parents were ever able to experience their son on the radio was to feel the vibrations of the speaker and to watch the expressions on the faces of others in the room.

Making it easier to communicate with the deaf is one of the missions of Deaf Awareness Week.  Being in the communication business myself I hope to somehow help achieve that.

My thanks to St. Mary's Superintendent Tim Kelly and Athletic Director Jim Carmody for the invitation to speak at Monday night's open house and to Sign Language Educator and Hall of Fame Curator Pam Rohring for a wonderful package of photos and other memorabilia of my parents' time at St. Mary's.