Miss-Delectable
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Deaf speaker teaches students everyone has a gift
Motivational speaker Sue Thomas started with a small experiment. She asked Atlantic Christian School students and parents to cover their ears and try to understand her.
Thomas, who is deaf, went into a quick monologue without the microphone; her words were inaudible even to the audience members who didn't "shut off" their hearing.
Afterward, Thomas said she can see people moving their mouths but cannot hear noise. "Welcome to my world of silence," said Thomas, 58, who lost her hearing as a toddler.
Thomas, of Vermont, spoke to more than 275 people Friday. The speech covered her childhood in Ohio and her experience reading lips for the Federal Bureau of Investigation nearly 30 years ago. Her life inspired a TV drama, "Sue Thomas: F.B. Eye," which aired on the former PAX network from 2002 to 2005.
Thomas said she struggled as a child in Youngstown, taking years of speech therapy, and she was routinely bullied in school. Three things helped Thomas get through: her parents, roller skating and "Silent Night," a song she learned from her mother by feeling throat vibrations.
"I was a kid. I didn't know what the words were, I didn't know what it meant," Thomas said. "But I loved the rhytmn." She eventually went to Springfield College in Massachusetts and earned a degree in political science and international relations.
Her FBI career came about by coincidence - a friend from the Youngstown Hearing and Speech Center learned the FBI was looking for deaf people to do fingerprint analysis.
Thomas said moving to Washington, D.C., was a dream, but she thought counting finger lines was boring. A few months later, FBI agents approached her and asked her to review a surveillance tape with broken audio. "I followed the bad guys and read their lips, and told the good guys about it, and like a snap of the finger, I was in the world of sound," said Thomas, who was an FBI agent special assistant from 1979 to 1983.
While Thomas declined to elaborate on her work, she said most of her job involved evaluating tapes. She helped in cases similar to those of her fictional TV counterpart, such as embezzlement, and she sometimes led FBI tours.
Thomas said she left the FBI because she wanted to help others. Nowadays, Thomas, who also is an author and spokeswoman for multiple sclerosis, continues to travel the country giving talks with the help of a hearing dog, Katie, and an assistant. She also spoke Thursday at Cal-
vary Chapel in Ocean City.
She closed her speech singing "Silent Night" and reminding the audience that God gave everyone a gift. Thomas challenged the students to discover their own talents and share them with the world. "There isn't anything you can't do. God is in you," Thomas said. "Are you going to waste it, or are you going to become?"
Maria Carey, a school mother with three children, was touched by the speech and hoped Thomas could be a role model for the students.
Twelfth-grader Casey Richvalsky said she was impressed by Thomas' perseverance. "It shows how it has to do with your attitude, and your situation (in life) is what you make of it," she said.
Motivational speaker Sue Thomas started with a small experiment. She asked Atlantic Christian School students and parents to cover their ears and try to understand her.
Thomas, who is deaf, went into a quick monologue without the microphone; her words were inaudible even to the audience members who didn't "shut off" their hearing.
Afterward, Thomas said she can see people moving their mouths but cannot hear noise. "Welcome to my world of silence," said Thomas, 58, who lost her hearing as a toddler.
Thomas, of Vermont, spoke to more than 275 people Friday. The speech covered her childhood in Ohio and her experience reading lips for the Federal Bureau of Investigation nearly 30 years ago. Her life inspired a TV drama, "Sue Thomas: F.B. Eye," which aired on the former PAX network from 2002 to 2005.
Thomas said she struggled as a child in Youngstown, taking years of speech therapy, and she was routinely bullied in school. Three things helped Thomas get through: her parents, roller skating and "Silent Night," a song she learned from her mother by feeling throat vibrations.
"I was a kid. I didn't know what the words were, I didn't know what it meant," Thomas said. "But I loved the rhytmn." She eventually went to Springfield College in Massachusetts and earned a degree in political science and international relations.
Her FBI career came about by coincidence - a friend from the Youngstown Hearing and Speech Center learned the FBI was looking for deaf people to do fingerprint analysis.
Thomas said moving to Washington, D.C., was a dream, but she thought counting finger lines was boring. A few months later, FBI agents approached her and asked her to review a surveillance tape with broken audio. "I followed the bad guys and read their lips, and told the good guys about it, and like a snap of the finger, I was in the world of sound," said Thomas, who was an FBI agent special assistant from 1979 to 1983.
While Thomas declined to elaborate on her work, she said most of her job involved evaluating tapes. She helped in cases similar to those of her fictional TV counterpart, such as embezzlement, and she sometimes led FBI tours.
Thomas said she left the FBI because she wanted to help others. Nowadays, Thomas, who also is an author and spokeswoman for multiple sclerosis, continues to travel the country giving talks with the help of a hearing dog, Katie, and an assistant. She also spoke Thursday at Cal-
vary Chapel in Ocean City.
She closed her speech singing "Silent Night" and reminding the audience that God gave everyone a gift. Thomas challenged the students to discover their own talents and share them with the world. "There isn't anything you can't do. God is in you," Thomas said. "Are you going to waste it, or are you going to become?"
Maria Carey, a school mother with three children, was touched by the speech and hoped Thomas could be a role model for the students.
Twelfth-grader Casey Richvalsky said she was impressed by Thomas' perseverance. "It shows how it has to do with your attitude, and your situation (in life) is what you make of it," she said.