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Concord Monitor - Without interpretation
Craig Reardon is a recovering alcoholic. For 14 years, the 38-year-old drank every day. A stint in jail four years ago helped set him straight. Today, he has a new life - a new wife, a new baby - in Northwood.
But staying sober in New Hampshire isn't easy for Reardon, who is deaf. There are barriers here that didn't exist in his native Massachusetts, where the state plans to spend $302,000 this year on sign language interpreters for deaf people in substance abuse programs. New Hampshire's budget is zero.
If Reardon wants to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, he has to ask a friend to interpret. Sometimes his wife, Rachel Farrell, who works as an interpreter, volunteers to sign to him with one hand while holding their 10-month-old daughter, Mary, on her lap with the other. But Reardon and Farrell have five other kids between them, and finding time for AA meetings together can be tough.
Plus, they said, Reardon shouldn't have to rely on favors, shouldn't have to fight, shouldn't have to break the anonymity of AA to talk to lawmakers about his problem, just to stay healthy. If he were to relapse, he'd likely go to a state-sponsored rehab center, where interpreters would be provided.
"I'm worried that if I don't have the support - I'm worried about a relapse," Reardon said recently through an interpreter. "I love my family. I love my life. I need to be a role model for my children.
"I need them to say, 'We have a good, fun father who's involved in our life.' I don't want to . . . be that drunk that my kids know. It's a fear. And my prediction is if it continues on the path that it has been going that it might go down that road," he said.
"I have a lot of support . . . but I need that AA meeting."
'Big D deaf'
Reardon was born deaf. His parents, two sisters and brother can hear.
He doesn't know what caused his deafness, but he's embraced it. Reardon considers himself "big D Deaf," which means he uses American Sign Language and identifies with deaf culture. Others consider themselves "little d deaf," which means they use electronic hearing devices and learn to speak.
Reardon spent most of his childhood in Billerica, Mass. When he was young, he went to the Beverly School for the Deaf, where the teachers taught in sign language. He then went to Framingham High School, where he was mainstreamed into some of his classes with the help of an interpreter.
As a teenager, Reardon said he was a troublemaker, a good guy who liked to pick on people and pull pranks. Though he started drinking heavily in his 20s, Reardon said he didn't get in serious trouble until he was in his early 30s. He wouldn't elaborate; he doesn't want his kids to know the details.
The trouble lasted four years and included a couple of arrests. Reardon was living in Massachusetts then, working as a forklift operator in a warehouse. He said he didn't think the arrests were a big deal at the time, and he didn't think they meant he had a problem.
"What really stopped me," he said, "was my incarceration."
Reardon was in jail for a little less than a year. He didn't want to say what for specifically, only that it involved alcohol. While in jail, Reardon was visited by a deaf seminarian and a priest who was fluent in sign language. They told him about Alcoholics Anonymous. Until then, he knew nothing about it.
"When you're deaf, you have less exposure to general public things," said Farrell, his wife.
Reardon was released from jail on Dec. 24, 2004. He spent Christmas weekend in a hotel room and a few days later joined a recovery program run by the Salvation Army. He lived in a dorm-type situation with other alcoholics and worked in the thrift shop warehouse. Every day, he went to counseling.
"The program was wonderful," Reardon said. "It worked for me. It helped me realize the error of my ways. It got me into AA. They had interpreting services there, and I learned a lot of what I didn't know."
The two meet
Reardon and Farrell met Jan. 3, 2005. She was living in Lynn, Mass., raising three children on her own, and had recently gone to school to become a sign language interpreter. He was an alcoholic just starting on the path to recovery. At some of his very first AA meetings, he wrote notes asking for an interpreter. One of the other participants said he had a friend, Farrell, who might be able to come.
At first, Farrell was hesitant. She had her three young kids at home and the AA meetings were at night. After some prodding, she agreed to have her brother watch the kids so she could try it - once.
"So I went," she said, "and I was so surprised because I worked at the New England Homes for the Deaf, which is a nursing home for deaf elders, for several years, and I expected to see an old deaf man.
"And I said, 'Oh! He's young!' "
Farrell, 37, laughed easily while she told the story recently in the living room of their cozy home in Northwood. She sat on the couch next to Reardon, who sat across from an interpreter. Mary bounced and gurgled in her lap. Outside, Farrell's 10-year-old daughter, Siobhan, hit tennis balls with a baseball bat.
Farrell is easygoing, quick to smile and calm, even when her 16-year-old son calls to tell her he's blown a tire on the highway. Reardon is more serious, more of a worrier. He has a mischievous, playful side too. Several times during the interview, he teased his wife in sign language and she joked back.
Soon after their first meeting, Farrell started interpreting for Reardon regularly, showing up 15 minutes early so she could talk to him more. "That was like my fun, literally, for the week," she said.
"It was like, 'Oh, I get to go hang out with Craig for a little bit,' " Farrell said. "And then somehow, I don't even remember how, one time he came fishing with us, because I used to take my kids fishing all the time when they were little. . . . It was really fun to have someone to talk to while they fished."
At that point, Reardon was going to AA meetings nearly every day. In Massachusetts, the state Department of Public Health contracts with an agency to provide interpreters for deaf people who want to go to drug and alcohol treatment centers and 12-step meetings. According to agency spokeswoman Jennifer Kritz, the state spent $302,000 on services last year and has budgeted the same this year.
During the first eight months of the last fiscal year, there were 1,215 requests for interpreters for substance abuse meetings, Kritz said. Her office doesn't track how many people made those requests.
Reardon said he never thought much of it; whenever he needed an interpreter, the state would provide one. When he and Farrell decided to move an hour and a half north to New Hampshire in October 2005 - "more bugs, less drugs," Farrell says - Reardon figured it'd be the same here.
No funding
At first, that was true. For a year and a half, Reardon said, Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, a Concord-based nonprofit that contracts with the state to provide services, used a pot of money called Part B to pay for an interpreter to go with Reardon to his AA meetings once a week.
But last year, Reardon said, the agency told him he could no longer use Part B money for AA interpreters. They told him it wasn't allowed, he said, and left him hanging with no alternative.
"That's when I kind of got crushed," Reardon said.
"There's been no funding for a year now, and he doesn't go (to AA meetings) unless I'm going to go or unless we have friends who are interpreters who have volunteered to interpret," Farrell said. "People have been nice, but it's occasional. People are busy. I'm busy, and he's my husband."
Part B refers to a section of federal disability law. For people who are deaf, the law says Part B funds can be used to provide interpreters for one-time social events, such as family reunions. Reardon and Farrell said they used Part B money to hire interpreters for their wedding and for Mary's baptism.
New Hampshire has $256,374 total in Part B funds this year, said Joan Holleran, who works for the state Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation. Of that, $60,000 is set aside for Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, to provide interpreters and other programs. But there's a limit to how much a single deaf or hard of hearing person can receive each year: up to $350 each in services, according to Holleran.
That doesn't stretch very far. Interpreters charge between $30 and $45 an hour, and most charge mileage expenses too. Reardon and Farrell said that at first, Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services allowed Reardon to use other people's unclaimed Part B money for his AA interpreters.
But in May 2007, the Northeast told the couple the money had run out. They waited for it to be replenished but when it was, Farrell said they were told that new rules prohibited it from being used for AA.
Susan Wolf-Downes, the agency's executive director, would not say whether the agency had ever used Part B funds to pay for AA interpreters. She did say that the money is no longer used for that purpose.
Wolf-Downes, who is deaf and uses an interpreter, said the agency has looked for loopholes in the law to help Reardon but hasn't found any. "The question is, who should pay for that?" she said. "And everybody points the finger at everybody else, and eventually, they point the finger at us.
"People assume that because we're the deaf agency, we should be able to solve deaf problems."
But everyone in the state who has looked at the issue - from disabilities rights advocates to state employees to legislators - has come up with the same answer as Holleran: "There is no funding."
Not the state's job?
Experts say it's not the state's responsibility to provide interpreters for AA. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act requires only that states provide access to their own programs and services.
Instead, the responsibility may lie with AA itself, though Amy Messer, legal director of the nonprofit state Disabilities Rights Center, said that remains an open question. The ADA requires "public accommodations," such as businesses and parks, to provide interpreters to people who are deaf. But, Messer said, it's never been established whether AA is a public accommodation under the law.
"There isn't any case law on it as far as we're aware," Messer said.
There's another possible roadblock, as well: The ADA says public accommodations are not required to provide access if doing so would cause an "undue burden or expense." AA is self-supporting through members' contributions, which are often a dollar or two tossed into a bucket passed at meetings.
Ken L., chairman of the New Hampshire Area Assembly of Alcoholics Anonymous, said the money collected at AA meetings usually isn't much and is used to pay for meeting space, hot coffee and pamphlets. Ken did not want his last name used in this story; anonymity is one of AA's tenets.
Ken didn't know about Reardon's situation before he was told by a reporter. After he heard about it, he researched AA guidelines and found a set of instructions called "Carrying the A.A. Message to the Deaf Alcoholic." They explain that many deaf people use interpreters, who usually charge a fee.
"Some A.A. groups cover this expense," the instructions say. "Sometimes an agency will take care of the expense. . . . Whatever arrangements are made should be based on a group conscience decision arrived at after full discussion at a business meeting." The instructions also contain a warning.
"Be careful of placing too much reliance on volunteers," the two-page rules say, "as deaf members rely on these services and there should be stability in whether the meeting is interpreted or not."
There are about 700 AA meetings each week in New Hampshire, Ken said, some of which have as many as 75 members and some of which have as few as six. To hire an interpreter, an individual group would have to vote to spend a portion of their collected money on the expense.
"It's not that we don't want to," Ken said. "But we have to understand what it's going to cost us."
Reardon and Farrell understand that. That's why they've turned to lawmakers for help.
Not giving up
More than once, Reardon and Farrell have gone to a meeting of the state Commission on Deafness and Hearing Loss, a group composed of legislators, state employees, advocates for the deaf and interpreters. It was established last year to recommend policy changes and new laws, including increasing access to interpreters, that would benefit people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Its final report is due Nov. 1.
But though many members of the group sympathize with Reardon's plight, chairwoman Susan Emerson, a Republican state representative from Rindge, says there isn't much the commission can do for him. The group doesn't have any money of its own, she said. It also has bigger fish to fry, such as developing better job placement programs for deaf people and ensuring that they get basic services.
"I just don't have an answer for him," Emerson said.
But Reardon and Farrell aren't giving up. They called the Monitor in the hopes that sharing their story would shed light on the issue. And they'll keep at it, even if it's sometimes uncomfortable.
"I feel almost embarrassed that it's such a problem, that I need to have this service, that I need to have this interview, get involved with this part of my life," Reardon said recently to a reporter.
"A lot of people are in AA and other people don't know about it," he said.
But even with the embarrassment, the barriers and all the extra hoops to jump through, Reardon said he doesn't want to move back to Massachusetts. To him, New Hampshire means open space, a clean start, a new beginning. Even though it'd be easier to head south, he's not willing to give that up.
"I do have a new life," Reardon said. "I have a new daughter and a new wife, and we have a new life up here in New Hampshire. I've been reunited with my two children from my previous relationship.
"I feel like I see colors," he said. "During my time when I wasn't sober, it was almost like it was gray. Everything was black and white. There was no color. There was no happiness. And now, I feel like with that color, with that added feature to my life, I can maintain sobriety." He just needs a little help.
Craig Reardon is a recovering alcoholic. For 14 years, the 38-year-old drank every day. A stint in jail four years ago helped set him straight. Today, he has a new life - a new wife, a new baby - in Northwood.
But staying sober in New Hampshire isn't easy for Reardon, who is deaf. There are barriers here that didn't exist in his native Massachusetts, where the state plans to spend $302,000 this year on sign language interpreters for deaf people in substance abuse programs. New Hampshire's budget is zero.
If Reardon wants to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, he has to ask a friend to interpret. Sometimes his wife, Rachel Farrell, who works as an interpreter, volunteers to sign to him with one hand while holding their 10-month-old daughter, Mary, on her lap with the other. But Reardon and Farrell have five other kids between them, and finding time for AA meetings together can be tough.
Plus, they said, Reardon shouldn't have to rely on favors, shouldn't have to fight, shouldn't have to break the anonymity of AA to talk to lawmakers about his problem, just to stay healthy. If he were to relapse, he'd likely go to a state-sponsored rehab center, where interpreters would be provided.
"I'm worried that if I don't have the support - I'm worried about a relapse," Reardon said recently through an interpreter. "I love my family. I love my life. I need to be a role model for my children.
"I need them to say, 'We have a good, fun father who's involved in our life.' I don't want to . . . be that drunk that my kids know. It's a fear. And my prediction is if it continues on the path that it has been going that it might go down that road," he said.
"I have a lot of support . . . but I need that AA meeting."
'Big D deaf'
Reardon was born deaf. His parents, two sisters and brother can hear.
He doesn't know what caused his deafness, but he's embraced it. Reardon considers himself "big D Deaf," which means he uses American Sign Language and identifies with deaf culture. Others consider themselves "little d deaf," which means they use electronic hearing devices and learn to speak.
Reardon spent most of his childhood in Billerica, Mass. When he was young, he went to the Beverly School for the Deaf, where the teachers taught in sign language. He then went to Framingham High School, where he was mainstreamed into some of his classes with the help of an interpreter.
As a teenager, Reardon said he was a troublemaker, a good guy who liked to pick on people and pull pranks. Though he started drinking heavily in his 20s, Reardon said he didn't get in serious trouble until he was in his early 30s. He wouldn't elaborate; he doesn't want his kids to know the details.
The trouble lasted four years and included a couple of arrests. Reardon was living in Massachusetts then, working as a forklift operator in a warehouse. He said he didn't think the arrests were a big deal at the time, and he didn't think they meant he had a problem.
"What really stopped me," he said, "was my incarceration."
Reardon was in jail for a little less than a year. He didn't want to say what for specifically, only that it involved alcohol. While in jail, Reardon was visited by a deaf seminarian and a priest who was fluent in sign language. They told him about Alcoholics Anonymous. Until then, he knew nothing about it.
"When you're deaf, you have less exposure to general public things," said Farrell, his wife.
Reardon was released from jail on Dec. 24, 2004. He spent Christmas weekend in a hotel room and a few days later joined a recovery program run by the Salvation Army. He lived in a dorm-type situation with other alcoholics and worked in the thrift shop warehouse. Every day, he went to counseling.
"The program was wonderful," Reardon said. "It worked for me. It helped me realize the error of my ways. It got me into AA. They had interpreting services there, and I learned a lot of what I didn't know."
The two meet
Reardon and Farrell met Jan. 3, 2005. She was living in Lynn, Mass., raising three children on her own, and had recently gone to school to become a sign language interpreter. He was an alcoholic just starting on the path to recovery. At some of his very first AA meetings, he wrote notes asking for an interpreter. One of the other participants said he had a friend, Farrell, who might be able to come.
At first, Farrell was hesitant. She had her three young kids at home and the AA meetings were at night. After some prodding, she agreed to have her brother watch the kids so she could try it - once.
"So I went," she said, "and I was so surprised because I worked at the New England Homes for the Deaf, which is a nursing home for deaf elders, for several years, and I expected to see an old deaf man.
"And I said, 'Oh! He's young!' "
Farrell, 37, laughed easily while she told the story recently in the living room of their cozy home in Northwood. She sat on the couch next to Reardon, who sat across from an interpreter. Mary bounced and gurgled in her lap. Outside, Farrell's 10-year-old daughter, Siobhan, hit tennis balls with a baseball bat.
Farrell is easygoing, quick to smile and calm, even when her 16-year-old son calls to tell her he's blown a tire on the highway. Reardon is more serious, more of a worrier. He has a mischievous, playful side too. Several times during the interview, he teased his wife in sign language and she joked back.
Soon after their first meeting, Farrell started interpreting for Reardon regularly, showing up 15 minutes early so she could talk to him more. "That was like my fun, literally, for the week," she said.
"It was like, 'Oh, I get to go hang out with Craig for a little bit,' " Farrell said. "And then somehow, I don't even remember how, one time he came fishing with us, because I used to take my kids fishing all the time when they were little. . . . It was really fun to have someone to talk to while they fished."
At that point, Reardon was going to AA meetings nearly every day. In Massachusetts, the state Department of Public Health contracts with an agency to provide interpreters for deaf people who want to go to drug and alcohol treatment centers and 12-step meetings. According to agency spokeswoman Jennifer Kritz, the state spent $302,000 on services last year and has budgeted the same this year.
During the first eight months of the last fiscal year, there were 1,215 requests for interpreters for substance abuse meetings, Kritz said. Her office doesn't track how many people made those requests.
Reardon said he never thought much of it; whenever he needed an interpreter, the state would provide one. When he and Farrell decided to move an hour and a half north to New Hampshire in October 2005 - "more bugs, less drugs," Farrell says - Reardon figured it'd be the same here.
No funding
At first, that was true. For a year and a half, Reardon said, Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, a Concord-based nonprofit that contracts with the state to provide services, used a pot of money called Part B to pay for an interpreter to go with Reardon to his AA meetings once a week.
But last year, Reardon said, the agency told him he could no longer use Part B money for AA interpreters. They told him it wasn't allowed, he said, and left him hanging with no alternative.
"That's when I kind of got crushed," Reardon said.
"There's been no funding for a year now, and he doesn't go (to AA meetings) unless I'm going to go or unless we have friends who are interpreters who have volunteered to interpret," Farrell said. "People have been nice, but it's occasional. People are busy. I'm busy, and he's my husband."
Part B refers to a section of federal disability law. For people who are deaf, the law says Part B funds can be used to provide interpreters for one-time social events, such as family reunions. Reardon and Farrell said they used Part B money to hire interpreters for their wedding and for Mary's baptism.
New Hampshire has $256,374 total in Part B funds this year, said Joan Holleran, who works for the state Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation. Of that, $60,000 is set aside for Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, to provide interpreters and other programs. But there's a limit to how much a single deaf or hard of hearing person can receive each year: up to $350 each in services, according to Holleran.
That doesn't stretch very far. Interpreters charge between $30 and $45 an hour, and most charge mileage expenses too. Reardon and Farrell said that at first, Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services allowed Reardon to use other people's unclaimed Part B money for his AA interpreters.
But in May 2007, the Northeast told the couple the money had run out. They waited for it to be replenished but when it was, Farrell said they were told that new rules prohibited it from being used for AA.
Susan Wolf-Downes, the agency's executive director, would not say whether the agency had ever used Part B funds to pay for AA interpreters. She did say that the money is no longer used for that purpose.
Wolf-Downes, who is deaf and uses an interpreter, said the agency has looked for loopholes in the law to help Reardon but hasn't found any. "The question is, who should pay for that?" she said. "And everybody points the finger at everybody else, and eventually, they point the finger at us.
"People assume that because we're the deaf agency, we should be able to solve deaf problems."
But everyone in the state who has looked at the issue - from disabilities rights advocates to state employees to legislators - has come up with the same answer as Holleran: "There is no funding."
Not the state's job?
Experts say it's not the state's responsibility to provide interpreters for AA. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act requires only that states provide access to their own programs and services.
Instead, the responsibility may lie with AA itself, though Amy Messer, legal director of the nonprofit state Disabilities Rights Center, said that remains an open question. The ADA requires "public accommodations," such as businesses and parks, to provide interpreters to people who are deaf. But, Messer said, it's never been established whether AA is a public accommodation under the law.
"There isn't any case law on it as far as we're aware," Messer said.
There's another possible roadblock, as well: The ADA says public accommodations are not required to provide access if doing so would cause an "undue burden or expense." AA is self-supporting through members' contributions, which are often a dollar or two tossed into a bucket passed at meetings.
Ken L., chairman of the New Hampshire Area Assembly of Alcoholics Anonymous, said the money collected at AA meetings usually isn't much and is used to pay for meeting space, hot coffee and pamphlets. Ken did not want his last name used in this story; anonymity is one of AA's tenets.
Ken didn't know about Reardon's situation before he was told by a reporter. After he heard about it, he researched AA guidelines and found a set of instructions called "Carrying the A.A. Message to the Deaf Alcoholic." They explain that many deaf people use interpreters, who usually charge a fee.
"Some A.A. groups cover this expense," the instructions say. "Sometimes an agency will take care of the expense. . . . Whatever arrangements are made should be based on a group conscience decision arrived at after full discussion at a business meeting." The instructions also contain a warning.
"Be careful of placing too much reliance on volunteers," the two-page rules say, "as deaf members rely on these services and there should be stability in whether the meeting is interpreted or not."
There are about 700 AA meetings each week in New Hampshire, Ken said, some of which have as many as 75 members and some of which have as few as six. To hire an interpreter, an individual group would have to vote to spend a portion of their collected money on the expense.
"It's not that we don't want to," Ken said. "But we have to understand what it's going to cost us."
Reardon and Farrell understand that. That's why they've turned to lawmakers for help.
Not giving up
More than once, Reardon and Farrell have gone to a meeting of the state Commission on Deafness and Hearing Loss, a group composed of legislators, state employees, advocates for the deaf and interpreters. It was established last year to recommend policy changes and new laws, including increasing access to interpreters, that would benefit people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Its final report is due Nov. 1.
But though many members of the group sympathize with Reardon's plight, chairwoman Susan Emerson, a Republican state representative from Rindge, says there isn't much the commission can do for him. The group doesn't have any money of its own, she said. It also has bigger fish to fry, such as developing better job placement programs for deaf people and ensuring that they get basic services.
"I just don't have an answer for him," Emerson said.
But Reardon and Farrell aren't giving up. They called the Monitor in the hopes that sharing their story would shed light on the issue. And they'll keep at it, even if it's sometimes uncomfortable.
"I feel almost embarrassed that it's such a problem, that I need to have this service, that I need to have this interview, get involved with this part of my life," Reardon said recently to a reporter.
"A lot of people are in AA and other people don't know about it," he said.
But even with the embarrassment, the barriers and all the extra hoops to jump through, Reardon said he doesn't want to move back to Massachusetts. To him, New Hampshire means open space, a clean start, a new beginning. Even though it'd be easier to head south, he's not willing to give that up.
"I do have a new life," Reardon said. "I have a new daughter and a new wife, and we have a new life up here in New Hampshire. I've been reunited with my two children from my previous relationship.
"I feel like I see colors," he said. "During my time when I wasn't sober, it was almost like it was gray. Everything was black and white. There was no color. There was no happiness. And now, I feel like with that color, with that added feature to my life, I can maintain sobriety." He just needs a little help.