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http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060719/SPORTS/607190423/-1/ZONES01
Tim and Doris Mast opened their kids' worlds when they adopted them from Colombia. But it wasn't until the family moved from rural Ohio to Indy to enroll in the School for the Deaf, with its vibrant sports program, that they began to thrive.
That much becomes clear when, translating for her deaf son Jose, she spells out the names of his favorite basketball players, which he is enthusiastically signing.
"K-O-B-E?" she asks, unsure of the pronunciation. "S-H-A-Q?"
While she doesn't appreciate Bryant's jump shot or O'Neal's dominating presence -- NBA games are easy to ignore when they're muted on the television -- Doris understands how important sports are to sons Victor, 17, and Jose, 16. It's a big reason the Masts are in Indiana.
But that's just the most recent chapter in the remarkable story of this Noblesville family.
Ten years ago, Doris and Tim Mast adopted the boys, both deaf, from Colombia. Four years ago, when they returned to adopt daughter Lia, who's also deaf, they found guerrilla warfare had broken out where the boys once lived. Just walking to the deaf school scared them.
"They save my life," Jose said simply, via instant e-mail message.
The family lived in Mennonite country in northeast Ohio, but the boys weren't happy. They struggled to fit in, middle schoolers being followed around by a 30-year-old female interpreter. Both were athletic but playing sports was problematic.
When Tim saw the joy on Jose's face when they visited the Indiana School for the Deaf, the way he made friends so quickly and watched football practice with envy, he knew what they had to do.
Now the family is thriving. Instead of shuffling through foster homes or growing up orphaned in a war-torn country, Jose and Victor are shooting baskets in their driveway, hunting with their dad and getting ready for ISD football camp. Instead of being mainstreamed and identified first and foremost as deaf, the boys and Lia (they also have a sister, Catherine, Tim and Doris' biological daughter) are part of the deaf community, taking full advantage of a flourishing ISD sports program that has become, as their mother said, "a stage for them to grow on."
"I think they would probably be like any children in a developing country's foster system," Doris said, asked what the kids' lives would have been like if not for her and her husband. "They wouldn't have a lot of power; they would be very limited in what they could do. They would definitely be family-less and, given that there's a lot of guerrilla warfare, I think they'd have been in a dangerous situation."
Now? "We watch all four of our children grow and thrive every day."
Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, Pacers forward Jermaine O'Neal, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the NCAA make Indianapolis a "major league" sports town. But it's countless unheralded stories, like the Masts', that provide the heart of the sports community.
An 'equal parent'
As with most adopting parents, it wasn't all about altruism. The Masts' motivation was admittedly selfish.
Tim, 52, also was born deaf. He met Doris, 47, at deaf events in Ohio when she was working as a translator. Before they got married, they decided to adopt because they wanted deaf children so that Tim would be an "equal parent."
"If you have more hearing than deaf, you become a hearing family and we wanted the deaf culture to reign," Doris said.
They looked into adoption agencies and found that children were not usually designated as deaf until age 5 or 6. They knew they wanted two boys about the same age so they could transition together.
Julie Craft, founder of the Adoption Support Center in Broad Ripple, said less than 2 percent of her agency's approximately 160 yearly international adoptions are children older than 6, and adding a disability makes it that much more rare that a child would be adopted by Americans.
Jose doesn't retain a lot from Colombia, but what he does is vivid. He remembers moving a lot, then going to the deaf school when he was 3. He lived there five days a week, returning to foster homes on the weekend. He remembers when he was 5, hiding in the woods for hours from a man who came onto campus with a gun. He remembers stealing food because he was hungry.
Jose said he thinks every day about what life would have been like if Doris and Tim -- Mom and Dad -- hadn't adopted him.
"Maybe I could (be) killed or with my new foster family," he said.
That first day, when Tim and Doris brought the brothers back to the hotel, Tim tried to relate to his new sons as many fathers would -- by playing ball. "But they wouldn't touch the ball with their hands," he said. "They would hit it off their heads or with their feet -- all that soccer growing up."
Yet the boys adapted to American culture and sign language quickly. Doris and Tim estimate that within five months all the boys' Colombian signs were gone -- except the insult words, which they used between themselves.
Soccer was also out the window, as the boys hunted and fished with their dad and fell in love with baseball, football and basketball.
"We got to the American culture; forget the soccer," Jose said.
Other changes were tougher.
School: Love at first sight
If anyone understands the importance of a deaf community, it's Tim, who spent his first 16 years without one.
As a boy growing up in Millersburg, Ohio, 80 miles south of Cleveland, his parents knew some hearing-impaired Amish who got by using non-sign language gestures and reading lips, so they thought Tim could do the same.
But deaf and hearing impaired are very different, and Tim struggled to communicate until his parents were talked into sending him to the Ohio School for the Deaf in Columbus when he was 16. He loved it.
"One reason I wanted to go was because I could not play sports in the hearing world," Tim said.
But Tim and Doris lived in Sterling, about 110 miles from Columbus, making the deaf school a difficult commute. Plus, they had just brought their kids home; they didn't want to send them away again. Jose, Victor and Lia did OK in mainstream schools at first, but as the boys got older, they struggled. It was difficult to make friends while anchored to an interpreter, and as Tim had found, mainstream sports were out of the question. They felt isolated.
"When we were mainstream, we were so limited," Jose said.
Just over three years ago, Jose and his father came to Indianapolis to look at the Indiana School for the Deaf. ISD is one of the top deaf schools in the country, and significantly larger than the Ohio School for the Deaf.
Both were overwhelmed. Jose fell in love with the place -- possibilities he never imagined were right here. During his tour he made a friend, who later informed him about the dates of basketball tryouts.
"Around Sept. 30, Jose said to me, 'I want to move to ISD. Basketball tryouts start Oct. 27 so I want to be there by Oct. 20,' " Doris said.
The move wasn't easy, especially on the parents. Tim had lived his whole life in northeast Ohio; he had built their log cabin home.
He and Jose moved first, in time for Jose to make the junior varsity team. The others stayed in Ohio the rest of the school year, so Doris could finish her teaching contract.
Once reunited in Noblesville, the Masts still struggled financially while they tried to sell their Ohio home, but with help from the Creekside Ministry Church and a break on rent from another ISD family, they were able to get by until it sold.
Now, Victor is getting ready to be a sophomore, Jose a junior. Jose plays football, basketball and baseball; Victor plays football and baseball and wrestles. They are opposites -- Jose the slight, quick receiver and Victor, who has trouble with depth perception, the solid lineman.
Lia, 11, is entering fourth grade at ISD. Catherine, 9, will be a third-grader at Stoney Creek Elementary. The girls are more into Bratz dolls than footballs, but both say baseball is their favorite sport.
All, the parents report, are happy. Including themselves.
"They made some big sacrifices, but it was for a good cause," said Michael Paulone, the ISD football and wrestling coach who has become a family friend. "Their boys have really grown a lot, physically and emotionally. They have made a lot of friends -- they are wonderful boys. . . . They are in a good family. They have a lot of love to give those children."
Paulone recalled the day he met Tim Mast, hearing the story about adopting the children from Colombia. He remembers thinking Tim's "heart is really big; it's as big as his whole body."
Football camp nears
One day earlier this summer, Jose signed about the NBA playoffs as Victor declared his favorite teams with both his signs and his wardrobe. Not yet a total Hoosier, Victor was dressed in a red Ohio State T-shirt and orange Cleveland Browns shorts.
"To him, they match," Doris said with a smile, looking at his clashing outfit. "Cleveland and Ohio."
Another school and sports year is right around the corner, and everyone is busy. Tim and Doris -- "very familiar faces around campus," according to ISD principal Bob Kovatch -- are involved in two fund-raising projects, selling firewood at the state fair and preparing a poster for homecoming. On their tree-lined Noblesville cul-de-sac, the Masts have piles of wood in their side-yard, chopped by Tim and the boys.
"You know that old show, 'The Beverly Hillbillies'?" Doris joked. "That's us, the country people in the city."
There's also a trampoline and a tent up, and the basketball hoop in the front yard. Tim has just planted new flowers, which Catherine promptly dribbled a basketball over. They are, to put it mildly, an active family.
The boys start football camp July 30. The biggest thing on Jose's mind is improving on last season's 1-8 record.
"Last year we were a young team," he signed, with his mom as the interpreter. "This year we have much more experience; we should be good."
Sports cliche, it seems, is the same in any language.
Tim and Doris Mast opened their kids' worlds when they adopted them from Colombia. But it wasn't until the family moved from rural Ohio to Indy to enroll in the School for the Deaf, with its vibrant sports program, that they began to thrive.
That much becomes clear when, translating for her deaf son Jose, she spells out the names of his favorite basketball players, which he is enthusiastically signing.
"K-O-B-E?" she asks, unsure of the pronunciation. "S-H-A-Q?"
While she doesn't appreciate Bryant's jump shot or O'Neal's dominating presence -- NBA games are easy to ignore when they're muted on the television -- Doris understands how important sports are to sons Victor, 17, and Jose, 16. It's a big reason the Masts are in Indiana.
But that's just the most recent chapter in the remarkable story of this Noblesville family.
Ten years ago, Doris and Tim Mast adopted the boys, both deaf, from Colombia. Four years ago, when they returned to adopt daughter Lia, who's also deaf, they found guerrilla warfare had broken out where the boys once lived. Just walking to the deaf school scared them.
"They save my life," Jose said simply, via instant e-mail message.
The family lived in Mennonite country in northeast Ohio, but the boys weren't happy. They struggled to fit in, middle schoolers being followed around by a 30-year-old female interpreter. Both were athletic but playing sports was problematic.
When Tim saw the joy on Jose's face when they visited the Indiana School for the Deaf, the way he made friends so quickly and watched football practice with envy, he knew what they had to do.
Now the family is thriving. Instead of shuffling through foster homes or growing up orphaned in a war-torn country, Jose and Victor are shooting baskets in their driveway, hunting with their dad and getting ready for ISD football camp. Instead of being mainstreamed and identified first and foremost as deaf, the boys and Lia (they also have a sister, Catherine, Tim and Doris' biological daughter) are part of the deaf community, taking full advantage of a flourishing ISD sports program that has become, as their mother said, "a stage for them to grow on."
"I think they would probably be like any children in a developing country's foster system," Doris said, asked what the kids' lives would have been like if not for her and her husband. "They wouldn't have a lot of power; they would be very limited in what they could do. They would definitely be family-less and, given that there's a lot of guerrilla warfare, I think they'd have been in a dangerous situation."
Now? "We watch all four of our children grow and thrive every day."
Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, Pacers forward Jermaine O'Neal, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the NCAA make Indianapolis a "major league" sports town. But it's countless unheralded stories, like the Masts', that provide the heart of the sports community.
An 'equal parent'
As with most adopting parents, it wasn't all about altruism. The Masts' motivation was admittedly selfish.
Tim, 52, also was born deaf. He met Doris, 47, at deaf events in Ohio when she was working as a translator. Before they got married, they decided to adopt because they wanted deaf children so that Tim would be an "equal parent."
"If you have more hearing than deaf, you become a hearing family and we wanted the deaf culture to reign," Doris said.
They looked into adoption agencies and found that children were not usually designated as deaf until age 5 or 6. They knew they wanted two boys about the same age so they could transition together.
Julie Craft, founder of the Adoption Support Center in Broad Ripple, said less than 2 percent of her agency's approximately 160 yearly international adoptions are children older than 6, and adding a disability makes it that much more rare that a child would be adopted by Americans.
Jose doesn't retain a lot from Colombia, but what he does is vivid. He remembers moving a lot, then going to the deaf school when he was 3. He lived there five days a week, returning to foster homes on the weekend. He remembers when he was 5, hiding in the woods for hours from a man who came onto campus with a gun. He remembers stealing food because he was hungry.
Jose said he thinks every day about what life would have been like if Doris and Tim -- Mom and Dad -- hadn't adopted him.
"Maybe I could (be) killed or with my new foster family," he said.
That first day, when Tim and Doris brought the brothers back to the hotel, Tim tried to relate to his new sons as many fathers would -- by playing ball. "But they wouldn't touch the ball with their hands," he said. "They would hit it off their heads or with their feet -- all that soccer growing up."
Yet the boys adapted to American culture and sign language quickly. Doris and Tim estimate that within five months all the boys' Colombian signs were gone -- except the insult words, which they used between themselves.
Soccer was also out the window, as the boys hunted and fished with their dad and fell in love with baseball, football and basketball.
"We got to the American culture; forget the soccer," Jose said.
Other changes were tougher.
School: Love at first sight
If anyone understands the importance of a deaf community, it's Tim, who spent his first 16 years without one.
As a boy growing up in Millersburg, Ohio, 80 miles south of Cleveland, his parents knew some hearing-impaired Amish who got by using non-sign language gestures and reading lips, so they thought Tim could do the same.
But deaf and hearing impaired are very different, and Tim struggled to communicate until his parents were talked into sending him to the Ohio School for the Deaf in Columbus when he was 16. He loved it.
"One reason I wanted to go was because I could not play sports in the hearing world," Tim said.
But Tim and Doris lived in Sterling, about 110 miles from Columbus, making the deaf school a difficult commute. Plus, they had just brought their kids home; they didn't want to send them away again. Jose, Victor and Lia did OK in mainstream schools at first, but as the boys got older, they struggled. It was difficult to make friends while anchored to an interpreter, and as Tim had found, mainstream sports were out of the question. They felt isolated.
"When we were mainstream, we were so limited," Jose said.
Just over three years ago, Jose and his father came to Indianapolis to look at the Indiana School for the Deaf. ISD is one of the top deaf schools in the country, and significantly larger than the Ohio School for the Deaf.
Both were overwhelmed. Jose fell in love with the place -- possibilities he never imagined were right here. During his tour he made a friend, who later informed him about the dates of basketball tryouts.
"Around Sept. 30, Jose said to me, 'I want to move to ISD. Basketball tryouts start Oct. 27 so I want to be there by Oct. 20,' " Doris said.
The move wasn't easy, especially on the parents. Tim had lived his whole life in northeast Ohio; he had built their log cabin home.
He and Jose moved first, in time for Jose to make the junior varsity team. The others stayed in Ohio the rest of the school year, so Doris could finish her teaching contract.
Once reunited in Noblesville, the Masts still struggled financially while they tried to sell their Ohio home, but with help from the Creekside Ministry Church and a break on rent from another ISD family, they were able to get by until it sold.
Now, Victor is getting ready to be a sophomore, Jose a junior. Jose plays football, basketball and baseball; Victor plays football and baseball and wrestles. They are opposites -- Jose the slight, quick receiver and Victor, who has trouble with depth perception, the solid lineman.
Lia, 11, is entering fourth grade at ISD. Catherine, 9, will be a third-grader at Stoney Creek Elementary. The girls are more into Bratz dolls than footballs, but both say baseball is their favorite sport.
All, the parents report, are happy. Including themselves.
"They made some big sacrifices, but it was for a good cause," said Michael Paulone, the ISD football and wrestling coach who has become a family friend. "Their boys have really grown a lot, physically and emotionally. They have made a lot of friends -- they are wonderful boys. . . . They are in a good family. They have a lot of love to give those children."
Paulone recalled the day he met Tim Mast, hearing the story about adopting the children from Colombia. He remembers thinking Tim's "heart is really big; it's as big as his whole body."
Football camp nears
One day earlier this summer, Jose signed about the NBA playoffs as Victor declared his favorite teams with both his signs and his wardrobe. Not yet a total Hoosier, Victor was dressed in a red Ohio State T-shirt and orange Cleveland Browns shorts.
"To him, they match," Doris said with a smile, looking at his clashing outfit. "Cleveland and Ohio."
Another school and sports year is right around the corner, and everyone is busy. Tim and Doris -- "very familiar faces around campus," according to ISD principal Bob Kovatch -- are involved in two fund-raising projects, selling firewood at the state fair and preparing a poster for homecoming. On their tree-lined Noblesville cul-de-sac, the Masts have piles of wood in their side-yard, chopped by Tim and the boys.
"You know that old show, 'The Beverly Hillbillies'?" Doris joked. "That's us, the country people in the city."
There's also a trampoline and a tent up, and the basketball hoop in the front yard. Tim has just planted new flowers, which Catherine promptly dribbled a basketball over. They are, to put it mildly, an active family.
The boys start football camp July 30. The biggest thing on Jose's mind is improving on last season's 1-8 record.
"Last year we were a young team," he signed, with his mom as the interpreter. "This year we have much more experience; we should be good."
Sports cliche, it seems, is the same in any language.