Miss-Delectable
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Pair brings gift of hope and hearing to Vietnamese orphanage
Separated by alphabets, culture and history, Joan Haber and the inquisitive Vietnamese orphans silently measured each other from across the schoolroom.
Husband Steve had been to the city decades earlier, when he was slogging through war zones with an airborne unit and the place was still known as Saigon.
But Joan Haber, a complete stranger to the neighborhood, wondered if she knew something about these deaf and hearing-impaired children that their Vietnamese peers did not. A victim of degenerative hearing loss, Haber tested them with a few words in her adopted sign language. The response was immediate and effusive.
"We didn't need an interpreter," she recalls, explaining that the French legacy in Indochina included sign language similar to America's. "The kids started signing like crazy. We were all so excited, and it was very emotional."
That was in February 2001. And before the year was over, the Habers had cemented their unscheduled connection with the orphanage -- called the School for Deaf Children Hy Vong 8 -- by mailing more than $30,000 worth of hearing-aid supplies collected from the Sarasota/Bradenton area.
More than six years later, the Habers intend to do it again, and Joan Haber's powers of persuasion are more conspicuous today.
Appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2004, Joan Haber chairs the Florida Coordinating Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and belongs to a host of related volunteer groups. As a part of the Citizens with Disabilities Advisory Board, she successfully lobbied Sarasota city commissioners to provide closed-captioning services to its televised meetings this year. After all, the numbers of potential beneficiaries are dramatic.
Combining 2006 census data with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's estimate that 16.1 percent of Floridians experience some form of hearing loss, Flo Innes figures 110,000 residents of Sarasota and Manatee counties are hearing impaired.
As founder of the nonprofit Advocates for Better Hearing Inc., Innes sells discounted "assistive listening devices" at a small office on Main Street in Sarasota. She commends Haber's activism and says the issue merits more attention.
"It's amazing to see how such a large group of people have fallen through the cracks," she says. "Insurance companies will pay for Viagra but not for hearing aids. Talk about priorities."
What those huge local numbers mean -- for the School for Deaf Children Hy Vong 8, anyway -- is that Southwest Floridians have a lot of discarded or unused equipment lying around. Denial, as Haber attests, goes with the territory.
Haber's hereditary "nerve deafness" unspooled slowly, during her 20s. She acknowledged it only after a colleague at a California title company insisted she get help. Vanity made her slow to warm up to the instrumentation, whose reliability was erratic. The final straw did not snap until she attended a Fourth of July party two years ago.
"There were about 50 people on a boat at the pier, and my hearing devices failed me," Haber says. "I couldn't understand a thing. I was in tears."
Haber, who was fitted with a clarifying cochlear implant in 2006, says the isolation associated with the disability in America pales to what she saw in Vietnam.
The trip was brainstormed by some of Steve Haber's old Army buddies from the 173rd Airborne. "It wasn't for closure or anything like that," says the veteran, who owns G. Fried Flooring in Sarasota. "I'd put it behind me years ago and moved on. But the more I thought about it, the more interesting it seemed."
Among other things, the small American tourist contingent returned to the scenes of blistering firefights, where Haber lost a comrade and earned a Purple Heart.
And they made a detour to a school for deaf orphans in a Ho Chi Minh City suburb.
"I don't know if it's a cultural thing, but a lot of children who are born deaf get dropped off in orphanages for the deaf," Joan Haber says. "The kids we saw seemed happy, but they're ostracized because they're disabled."
The Habers also took note of the antiquated equipment. Says Steve Haber, "We saw people using hearing aids that hadn't been made in years."
Moved by their reception, the Habers returned to the States and put out a call to local audiologists for donations of surplus hearing supplies.
Not only did their shipment arrive safely in Vietnam, but the students responded with handmade silk cards, which they sell to support their programs.
"Needless to say, it was an emotional thing," Steve Haber says. "They couldn't thank us enough."
So now, the couple hope to renew their ties with the children of America's former adversaries by liberating them from a world of silence.
"We'll take whatever people have," Steve Haber says. "Even hearing aids that might be broken may only need new batteries. We'll test them ourselves."
Separated by alphabets, culture and history, Joan Haber and the inquisitive Vietnamese orphans silently measured each other from across the schoolroom.
Husband Steve had been to the city decades earlier, when he was slogging through war zones with an airborne unit and the place was still known as Saigon.
But Joan Haber, a complete stranger to the neighborhood, wondered if she knew something about these deaf and hearing-impaired children that their Vietnamese peers did not. A victim of degenerative hearing loss, Haber tested them with a few words in her adopted sign language. The response was immediate and effusive.
"We didn't need an interpreter," she recalls, explaining that the French legacy in Indochina included sign language similar to America's. "The kids started signing like crazy. We were all so excited, and it was very emotional."
That was in February 2001. And before the year was over, the Habers had cemented their unscheduled connection with the orphanage -- called the School for Deaf Children Hy Vong 8 -- by mailing more than $30,000 worth of hearing-aid supplies collected from the Sarasota/Bradenton area.
More than six years later, the Habers intend to do it again, and Joan Haber's powers of persuasion are more conspicuous today.
Appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2004, Joan Haber chairs the Florida Coordinating Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and belongs to a host of related volunteer groups. As a part of the Citizens with Disabilities Advisory Board, she successfully lobbied Sarasota city commissioners to provide closed-captioning services to its televised meetings this year. After all, the numbers of potential beneficiaries are dramatic.
Combining 2006 census data with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's estimate that 16.1 percent of Floridians experience some form of hearing loss, Flo Innes figures 110,000 residents of Sarasota and Manatee counties are hearing impaired.
As founder of the nonprofit Advocates for Better Hearing Inc., Innes sells discounted "assistive listening devices" at a small office on Main Street in Sarasota. She commends Haber's activism and says the issue merits more attention.
"It's amazing to see how such a large group of people have fallen through the cracks," she says. "Insurance companies will pay for Viagra but not for hearing aids. Talk about priorities."
What those huge local numbers mean -- for the School for Deaf Children Hy Vong 8, anyway -- is that Southwest Floridians have a lot of discarded or unused equipment lying around. Denial, as Haber attests, goes with the territory.
Haber's hereditary "nerve deafness" unspooled slowly, during her 20s. She acknowledged it only after a colleague at a California title company insisted she get help. Vanity made her slow to warm up to the instrumentation, whose reliability was erratic. The final straw did not snap until she attended a Fourth of July party two years ago.
"There were about 50 people on a boat at the pier, and my hearing devices failed me," Haber says. "I couldn't understand a thing. I was in tears."
Haber, who was fitted with a clarifying cochlear implant in 2006, says the isolation associated with the disability in America pales to what she saw in Vietnam.
The trip was brainstormed by some of Steve Haber's old Army buddies from the 173rd Airborne. "It wasn't for closure or anything like that," says the veteran, who owns G. Fried Flooring in Sarasota. "I'd put it behind me years ago and moved on. But the more I thought about it, the more interesting it seemed."
Among other things, the small American tourist contingent returned to the scenes of blistering firefights, where Haber lost a comrade and earned a Purple Heart.
And they made a detour to a school for deaf orphans in a Ho Chi Minh City suburb.
"I don't know if it's a cultural thing, but a lot of children who are born deaf get dropped off in orphanages for the deaf," Joan Haber says. "The kids we saw seemed happy, but they're ostracized because they're disabled."
The Habers also took note of the antiquated equipment. Says Steve Haber, "We saw people using hearing aids that hadn't been made in years."
Moved by their reception, the Habers returned to the States and put out a call to local audiologists for donations of surplus hearing supplies.
Not only did their shipment arrive safely in Vietnam, but the students responded with handmade silk cards, which they sell to support their programs.
"Needless to say, it was an emotional thing," Steve Haber says. "They couldn't thank us enough."
So now, the couple hope to renew their ties with the children of America's former adversaries by liberating them from a world of silence.
"We'll take whatever people have," Steve Haber says. "Even hearing aids that might be broken may only need new batteries. We'll test them ourselves."
